Boing Boing: Technorati Tags: three great services on one page

Technorati is using TAGS that integrate Flickr and Del.ici.ous as well as blog postings into searches. BoingBoing explains this so I will be able to explain it to my students. Thanks to Cory Doctorow. Boing Boing: Technorati Tags: three great services on one page

Area code 615

Blog Nashville is taking shape and it looks interesting. The sessions are taking shape and I think there will be content aplenty. Sabril Bennett is the dynamic executive director of the New Century Journalism School which is playing host to the event. Sabril and I spent time at Newsplex, and I guess my work with blogging here at Columbia and certainly her involvement in the Blognashville trace back a bit to Newsplex and our training there. I guess as a blogger one of my reservations about the conference is seeing everyone F2F.

State Legislators slowly come to see threat of rampant RFID

RFIDWell I had gotten back on the RFID bandwagon and now comes this story. My students sometimes think I am trying to tell them a tall tale when I bring up RFID. Then we see who has bought clothing with the RFID tag in it--it is not identified as RFID, but the tag is in a little pouch usuall with a scissors icon on it and it tells you to cut it out before you wash the clothing. The little plastic "thing" is the RFID circuit.

Concerns about RFID center around surreptitious scanning and tracking, since data on the chips can be picked up by either an authorized or an unauthorized reader without the knowledge of the person carrying the chip. For example, a student participating in a protest on a state university campus could be scanned by a campus policeman carrying a reader to track his political activities. Or, depending on the kind of data stored on the card, someone could read the data on a chip in order to clone it and create false documents.

Zigbee and RFID either cool or or worst nightmare

RFID and ZigbeeThe title is the link to the story and image of a pet door that only your pet (not mr. racoon) can open. Zigbee transmits the message to your wireless device that kitty has entered or left the building. I almost forgot about Zigbee, but the electronics world didn't...Zigbee can network over 200 common household devices so you can control and track them as if they were all on bluetooth. It is slower than bluetooth, but takes less energy. And who needs a refrigerator that tells you it is out of milk in a hurry?

ld Gets ZigBeed Atmel Corporation showed off a sensor-based pet door that uses a zigbee module to inform your home controller, or your cell phone, when a pet enters, or leaves the door. Add an RFID chip to Garfield, and the door could be set to only open when your own pet wants to get in, which will make the neighborhood raccoons quite upset.

RFID in your passport could set you up for "skimming." First there was scamming, then phishing, spyware, and now skimming, which is using a RFID reader to capture information off or RFID chips without authorization. EFF at its Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference has gotten the government's attention and proposed a "fix" so you and your passport won't be broadcasting your vitals as you travel the world. Wired News: Feds Rethinking RFID Passport Not up on RFID? Radio frequency identification device (or something close to that) is a topic I have been following for several years from when "dogtags" and bracelets with RFID chips were introduced for kids at school in Disney's Celebration city. I posted a picture of the first one I found in my pants (literally) when I bought them from J. Crew, and I discussed the impact that Wal-Mart's edict requiring RFID tags on all merchandize will have on moving RFID to ubiquitous technology. You can search the current buzz archives for "RFID" to check out these stories.

Blogs and the question of what protections their authors can claim was in the news recently, and now the Media Bloggers Association has taken action to support the rights of bloggers. MBA Files Amicus Brief in Apple Case * A news item at mediabloggers.org In our "Economy of Attention" it is unimportant how the viewer/user gets one's content. News is news as Gertrude Stein would say today. It ain't the media, its the message...

Dittothe previous item, taking "broadcast" out and substituting "newsweekly." It is about time and time shifting, and being always on and connected. I want your content, I just don't want to have to wait....Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits

USATODAY.com - Anchors may not be only change in TV news: "Whether it's Roberts tossing his tie, NBC's Brian Williams signing off with a trademark homily or ABC's Peter Jennings uncharacteristically wondering aloud to viewers when chemotherapy for his lung cancer will cost him his hair, change is in the wind." And is that someone arranging the deck chairs before the Titanic sets sail? Could be some of these efforts are coming late in the day. It is only anecdotal now, but my incoming students who are putative media majors do not watch network news. They barely watch any television. Is this just a student phase they go through? I guess that is a research idea to develop over the summer. There is hope in this story:

Technology now in place or in the works means viewers will no longer be limited to watching the evening news between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. or using a VCR or TiVo to record it. ABC is negotiating with several cable operators to make World News available on demand and hopes to have deals by the end of summer. Sprint users can now watch clips on their cell phones. CBS has a deal with Comcast in eight markets offering the Evening News on demand, and preliminary results are promising.

Clearly, this is what viewer/users are looking for. News when they want/need it, on whatever device is handy.

Interesting speculation that I think is obvious. If someone interviews a blogger, why wouldn't they have the reciprocal right to post about it in their blog. How interesting for the reader to cover read the about the interview from both sides.Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits

Blogs and blogging meet business arrangements. I am sure the story that Arianna Huffington is going to aggregate opinions in a group blog isn't news to anyone who was browsing over the weekend. The fact that the group blog is going to syndicate daily excerpts is more interesting. That is the way blogs work for digerati now. That is, the digerati take their news from sources in news media, from wire services, from blogs, and distill a version of the news from that. I am teaching my students about the Hutchins Report this week and was reflecting on the "full account of the day's news" directive to those who would do good journalism. In today's 24/7 news cycle, what is the equivalent of the "day's news?" If you have some suggestions, let me know. Syndicate to Offer Excerpts from Huffington's Celeb-Filled Blog

This is a really good cartoon. Go Lukovich. This is the "black smoke" cartoon.

Future of news. Economist.com

The potential global pandemic. I posted about Marburg, and here is one follow-up demonstrates the irony of a virus. If it kills most of its victims, it never gets as chance to spread worldwide. If it mutates, and kills fewer of the victims, it might be off and infecting us all. In Vietnam, A Dark Side To Good News On Bird Flu (washingtonpost.com): "If a disease quickly kills almost everyone it infects, it has little chance of spreading very far, according to international health experts. The less lethal bird flu becomes, they say, the more likely it is to develop into the global pandemic they fear, potentially killing tens of millions of people."

What a jerk. Henry Hyde (R IL) is hypocritical as we all know, trying to go after Clinton for the same things he did himself. But I never thought that he would compare the crimes of Nixon to the indiscretions of Clinton and admit that the attempt to get Clinton was some form of "payback." Good reporting by Andy Shaw. t r u t h o u t - Clinton Foe Admits Impeachment Was Payback

One of my e-lerts is about Marburg hemorrhagic fever. I have been using this event to demonstrate to students what an e-lert is, and why a reporter would set one up. In case any of you who heard me describe the horrors of Marburg are reading, here is an account that lays out the symptoms, the toll so far, and provides some public health kind of framing for the story.The Globe and Mail: No end in sight for Marburg toll: "Marburg is a cousin of the Ebola virus. Both are horrific, because once hemorrhaging begins, an infected person can bleed from the lips, eyes and rectum, and their vital organs dissolve. (Victims, however, do not bleed to death. Rather, they die of shock as the massive loss of fluids causes their blood pressure to drop precipitously.)"

Censorship by the Trib is usually interesting. From the Colonel's time forward, what the editors think needs to be kept out of print provides a commentary on la vie quotidienne. The comics they choose to censor are especially enlighting to a study of our American Culture. Censorship in the age of Translocal news means that you don't let your viewers see something that they can find on the Internet in pretty quick order. Here is what the Trib says today about The Boondocks "Today's original strip was based on an unconfirmed report in a gossip column. Please enjoy this substitute from 2004." The comic is online in a variety of places, like the Washington Post and there is commentary about the Jenna Bush incident dating from April 7th. You can find links to the NYPost story, the lyrics to "Da Butt" and a bio of the group that did the original song.Outside The Beltway : Jenna Bush %u2018Butt Dance%u2019 Video Well, the Trib is certainly espousing a point of view through its action, but I am not sure their explanation is transparent. Are they censoring the comic because the rumor is unsubstantiated or because it suggests something sexual and perhaps licentious or negative about Jenna Bush? We could debate the news ethics of the decision but somehow I think this is the kind of action that makes the 18-34 year olds turn away from MSM. Why not run the 'toon and then a Don Wycliff explanation of how it is just someone's opinion and how the NYPost has run gossip that is unsubstantiated? Anyway, you can tell I'm not a Trib editor. The Wonkette has written about this affair de "Da Butt" in her usual style so check her out for the last word.

I just heard Joe Cappo talking about the future of media. Interesting and as I was contemplating an economy of attention, his remarks rang true. People don't just attend to one media, they attend to many, and so it is content that is key, not its instantiated form.

Technorati: Tag: Media: "Media"

Cover-up in Washington? What is there to hide? Why block staffers from talking unless there is more to this propaganda story than we know now? It does seem political, not legal, to me. t r u t h o u t - White House Blocking Propaganda Probe

Gender and tech. I read this article with interest as I am a woman who teaches online publishing and production. In my current teaching setting, I don't have enough lab space and time for students, but the interest on the part of the students is there. The way lots of my colleagues pay lip service to the need for tech skills, but then don't model them, give students the opportunity to use them by giving reporting assignments where students can produce their content in a variety of output forms, and don't value content presentations on the web undermines our program. Personally, I still get "attitude" from men of all ages, even those many years my junior who know far less about computing than I do, simply because I am a woman. This is changing in some areas, like phone support for DSL, but at computer stores and in my day to day work, I still encounter this. My current boss defers to men with far less education and experience than I have, for example, and the result seeps into the educational fabric of our program. Tech-savvy women seek support in classroom and newsroom

Whose news? Well, we have Google with robot searches and algorithms to select new stories. I go to google because it is quick and it is built into my browser. Because it is automatic, not human generated, I feel like I know how to "play" my searches to get the edge I want. Then there is Yahoo, with its human editors. Personally, I think the Yahoo news page is ugly, so I use it less than Google. I wonder how valid aesthetics is as a guide to getting briefed on news. CNN and MSNBC sites are even uglier than Yahoo's and to me, they have the stigma of television news which obviously skews to the visual and the what is changing, rather than what might be news, but lacking visual components. My eighty year old mother likes to get "talking head" news from the experts or pundits and newscasters. I like to multi-task, so news I have to watch seems too slow for me. When I am online, I am reading (the average human reads 5 times as fast as the average human can speak-- do the math on how much news ground you can cover if you are reading vs. listening) and I have the ability to have multiple windows open, I can be listening to an audio stream and even talking on the phone. Additionally, MAGNIFIES has the corporate taint, because their news might be dictated either by an advertiser's wishes or they might shilling for other companies in their corporate silo (think news about Universal amusement parks.) I like the idea that a robot/agent scours many sites, leaving it to me to compare and contrast their quality and meaning. I can triangulate the truth of stories and make my own meaning mosaic* without newsprint. These days it is the second day stories with detail and nuance that make me read the paper newspaper. The headline stories are oldhat by the time the paper hits my front-yard at 4 A.M. I agree with this WSJ story about how we get our news now. WSJ.com - Yahoo 'Hybrid' Now Dominates News Web Sites * [old-fashioned link] McLuhan states, "With the speed-up of printing and news-gathering, this mosaic form has become the dominant aspect of human association; for the mosaic form means...participation in process." [7] Just as the newspaper is a collaboration of disparate sections, people, ideas, and writing/reporting styles, so are the people that read and use them. from http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/glossary2004/newspaper.htm

I think Rupert agrees with me about news, print, and Internet, which is kind of scary. Murdoch: Newspapers Must Stop Fearing Web

Trends in how content is packaged. This resonates with what I hear from my students. Obviously, the print edition can't be the vanguard of breaking news in an electronic age. However, when young people get their headlines from an online source, or use The Daily Show or Simpson's to "hip them" to the stories that are newsworthy, they would be interested in a print edition that didn't regurgitate stories like a presidential trip that had been blabbed about by TV news and was "old" by Internet time, but they were interested in details behind stories. Yes, the picture of the celebrity will grab their eyeballs, but the story about the problem the celebrity shares with everyman will keep them reading. ASNE Panel: Young Readers Want Very Different Writing, Packaging

Copyright vs. public's right to its cultural capital.Wired News: Copyright Reform to Free Orphans?

Blogs versus Apple and trade secrets. Here is an update on the filing by a "coalition of newspapers and media organizations" questionning the ruling that allows Apple to subpoena EFF clients and sue the "John Does" over blogs that published information on Apple products. ITworld.com - Traditional media, Internet industry support bloggers in fight against Apple

News aggregation and revenue, or lack of it worry editors and news business people.editorsweblog.org: AP worried that GoogleNews steals revenue

Blog overdose. Yes, just let blogs be blogs, and focus on issues of what the blogs and MSM are covering, writing about, and how they are doing it. Blogs are here to stay, and sometimes they contain "journalism."editorsweblog.org: Bloggers vs. Journalists: enough already!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Blog overload is surfacing. The question of who is going to report the news, and how they will be paid is moving to centerstage of the journalism debate as the importance of blogs and blogging is no longer in question. I say, micropayments and go back to the idea of content flags that "call home" to their creator after you download them. If my current Tribune subscription is $150 something per year, I would easily allocate that amount of money to a micropayment fund, and buy good reads for .001 cent. Who needs the physical entity of the NYTimes, WaPo, or any of the Tribune enterprises? What I will pay for is the reporting...Let me pay less because you won't have to advertise. Your quality of news, your reporter bylines will be your advertising...Blah, Blah, Blog

Who cares where the money is? Some web publishers have values beyond making the most money that they can. What's wrong with that? World of mergers and acquisitions distant for many micro-publishers

FCC and regulation. Here is an interesting blog focused on the FCC and preventing its domination by Parents Television Council. Read on. SpeakSpeak News

Media Bloggers nominated. You can check out the "Freedom of Expression" Blog Award and even vote for one of the organizations from here. Of course, being a Media Blogger, you know which one I voted for....Reporters without Borders Nominates MBA for Freedom of Expression Blog Award * A news item at mediabloggers.org

I have been on the road, and besides being away from the Internet I caught an awful flu bug so I haven't even had the energy to blog. This article provides suggestions for those who get bogged down by blogs and other information some light at the end of the tunnel in the form of information organizers. I have been talking about RSS for a couple of years, and since RSS doesn't work without a viewer, I have been talking about aggregators like Amphetadesk, Newsgator, Technorati, and Bloglines, too. Mark Glaser provides an update on aggregation in this article, noting especially how useful these tools can be for journalists.Human and automated aggregators help make sense of blogosphere