CULTURAS IN VITRO
Communist theme park to open its gates: Hoping to capitalise on a wave of nostalgia for Communist East Germany, a Berlin company is planning to build a theme park that revives life behind the Iron Curtain in the country that disappeared nearly 13 years ago.

CONTAMINANTES
Research Blogs: This is an annotated list of weblogs I have found that are used by researchers and academics as a part of their research practice.

VITAMEDIAS
"50 dos blogs mais interessantes da internet brasileira"

VITAMEDIAS
Mobile blogging how-to guide

ZITE
The Economists

VITAMEDIAS
Blogger Google F.A.Q.
Q: Will Blogger go away?
A: Nope. Blogger is going to maintain its branding and services. While we may integrate with Google in certain areas there will always be a Blogger.
Google is not a search company: With their acquisition of Pyra and new Content-Targeted Advertising offering, it should be apparent that Google is not a search company. What they are exactly is unclear, but their biggest asset is: a highly annotated map of the web.
Google's search for new ad revenue

.DE!
Dope gets suspects in big trouble at cop party: "I've met a lot of dumb drug dealers, but none this dumb."

VITAMEDIAS
TSF - Há quinze anos no ar: A TSF, criada a 29 de Fevereiro de 1988, celebra agora quinze anos de existência.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
In a spin: The record industry is desperately seeking a way out of its problems

ECO-TERROR
The global laissez-passer: a US passport: An interview with Saskia Sassen

ECO-TERROR
The World's Richest People: tantos Wal(ton)-Mart!!!

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Verbing Weirds Google: "Back in January, the American Dialect Society voted the neologism "to google" as the most useful word of 2002. Now bring on the lawyers! Google's have sent a cease-and-desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of the famous Word Spy site, demanding he remove google as a verb from his lexicon, or else. Frank Abate, an American editor for the Oxford English Dictionary, points out, however, that you can't claim proprietary rights to a verb."

VITAMEDIAS
Blog Não Discuto: eis o primeiro blog a querer ser comprado...

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Hooked on ClassicsNew tech art is no longer just about the technology

VITAMEDIAS
Has Online Media Bottomed Out? [A]n online media recovery based only on tiles, banners, and ever-more-intrusive advertising is not going to happen. Wait until you read that subscriptions and transactions are way up too, before you take out the party hats.

VITAMEDIAS
Saddam: French media mogul : Media monolith Hachette Filipacchi, already fearing an anti-French backlash, has a bigger problem: Saddam Hussein owns a $90 million stake in its parent company.
Saddam owns just under 2 percent of Lagardere SCA, the French company of which Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., publishers of Elle, Car & Driver, Women's Day and other titles, is a unit. His shares are held by Iraqi-controlled Montana Management, based in Geneva.

VITAMEDIAS
Lynch Moblogs: News travels faster than ever - and that includes news about your company. First came the Internet, with its seething chat rooms and mailing lists. Then came blogging, which made it easy for loudmouths to publish commentary on the Web. Now get ready for moblogging - shorthand for "mobile weblogging" - which can turn any street corner, checkout line, or supermarket aisle into a multimedia complaint hotline.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Studio Daniel Libeskind's plan for the World Trade Center site was selected by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

ECO-TERROR
Win Without War - A mainstream voice advocating alternatives to preemptive war against Iraq
On February 26th, hundreds of thousands of Americans flooded the Senate and White House with calls and faxes saying: Don't Invade Iraq, Use Tough Inspections to Disarm Saddam Hussein.

VITAMEDIAS
Questão argumentativa num blog que tenta ser de factos: Devem os media ser escrutinados com mais atenção?
Ponto prévio: é possível polémica saudável na blogosfera sem ser entre os entediantes infames, esquerdistas e derivados, fascinados pela recente descoberta da comunicação "online" e que arriscam a tornar-se em modelos de discussão "pública" semelhantes aos "newsgroups" nacionais, cujo ruído se sobrepõe ao conteúdo?
A questão surgiu derivada de um triângulo de pessoas interessantes (em termos do questionamento da actualidade social e mediática) que leio, concorde ou não com elas: uma opinião no Público, uma pergunta sobre esse ponto de vista e um contraponto.
Começando pelos fins: diz António Granado: "Pacheco Pereira [PP] escreve hoje no "Público" um texto onde, pela milésima vez, diz que é preciso escrutinar a comunicação social [...] Alguém é capaz de me explicar onde é que o homem quer chegar?"
Manuel Pinto argumenta (síntese): "Tal como há uma crítica de TV (de facto: da sua programação), de cinema, de música, etc, porque não há-de existir igualmente uma crítica dos media?" [...] Só me parece que uma tal linha de trabalho dos/nos media não pode ficar circunscrita ao jornalismo. Penso mesmo que tendências de fundo que se registam hoje no campo jornalístico resultam, em grande medida, da "contaminação" de outras variáveis do campo mediático-económico que não podem deixar de ser equacionadas.
Vamos a isto:
1) a crítica de TV não é apenas da sua programação mas do seu conceito, história e mesmo ideologia (veja-se o nem sempre interessante Cintra Torres no Público);
2) existe já e cada vez mais uma crítica implícita dos media, alicerçada em personagens mediáticos (como PP o faz cada vez mais, tal como Edite Estrela o fazia no Expresso no final da era Guterres, acabando como António Granado a questionar-me sobre qual o real objectivo destes textos...). Eles descobriram formas funcionais de interagir com os meios de comunicação social. Ainda há pouco tempo, o próprio PP referia em público como deixava tocar o telefone de manhã quando pressupunha vir de uma certa rádio e não lhe interessava falar ou negociava o "tempo de antena" para dizer o que entendia ter a dizer (para evitar com os "soundbytes" de que qualquer piada sobre sexo na Assembleia da República teria mais tempo de antena em "prime time" do que uma proposta legislativa - o exemplo foi do próprio PP). Por outro lado, há muito que as grandes empresas sabem gerir o seu "timing" mediático, pelo que a questão é se há crítica sobre esses movimentos mediáticos. Não há, digo eu!, concordando com Manuel Pinto de que há tendências de fundo que devem ser equacionadas. A questão é onde: nas universidades, nos media? Qualquer desses meios terá fragilidades próprias...;
3) finalmente, o texto de PP, que vale a pena analisar e argumentar:
"O único produto volátil, perigoso, capaz de envenenar milhões, capaz de levar pessoas ao suicídio ou ao homicídio, individual ou colectivo, que não tem qualquer controlo público, é a comunicação social."
- É um exagero e podia dizer-se o mesmo do antrax, da política em geral ou dos livros, alguns escritos pelo próprio PP;
"Os iogurtes têm de ter prazo de validade, os restaurantes são inspeccionados, o ar das cidades analisado, a água que bebemos purificada, a bolsa regulada, as empresas auditoradas, há controlos de qualidade por todo o lado, menos na comunicação social".
- Curiosamente, PP não fala da política...
"Numa sociedade em que somos protegidos de tudo por um edifício gigantesco de leis, regulamentos e instituições reguladoras, nada nos protege de sermos manipulados, falsamente informados, excitados por campanhas populistas, atingidos pela violência e a exibição agressiva de imagens poderosas e tantas vezes montadas."
- PP esquece que a liberdade de expressão passa exactamente pela diversidade de pontos de vista - embora eu suponha, até por escritos anteriores dele, que PP se refere à TV quando fala da comunicação social... E não é verdade que estamos "numa sociedade em que somos protegidos de tudo" - quem nos protege de legislação aprovada a favor de "lobbies"?!
"A última coisa que defendo é qualquer espécie de censura, prévia, posterior, de baixo, de cima ou do lado. A censura, nenhuma censura, é para aqui chamada. Oponho-me frontalmente a qualquer sugestão nesse sentido seja de que forma for, mesmo através da póstuma proposta do V-chip para as televisões."
- Não há quem defenda a censura nos dias de hoje, principalmente quando se sabe manobrar os meios mediáticos, como o exemplo do V-chip não é póstumo - os Estados Unidos continuam a bater-se por ele. Por cá, não houve reacções tecnológicas ou políticas no momento da sua famosa defesa por Paulo Portas, quando não havia sequer tecnologia para um V-chip - mas era uma boa bandeira de propaganda que todos temeram confrontar!
[...] "A única regulação que tem sentido neste terreno é a auto-regulação e essa deve ser incentivada."
- Claro, mas devemos questionar os exemplos recentes desta auto-regulação: se a TVI foi criticada por inserir factos dos "reality shows" no Telejornal, não vi críticas à RTP por anunciar no Telejornal novos bonecos (caricaturas de políticos) do Contra-Informação - quando ambas concordaram num processo de auto-regulação...;
[...] "A primeira, segunda, terceira e milésima coisa que defendo é um debate público, aberto e o mais amplo possível, contínuo, sistemático, envolvendo todo o tipo de órgãos de comunicação social."
- Uma forma de adiar o debate sério e a tomada de medidas eficazes em Portugal não é o de convocar todos para um debate público?...
"Este debate deve ser societal e estender-se sob formas próprias a todos os principais mecanismos de reprodução social, como sejam as escolas. Nas escolas, insisto há muito tempo, deve-se ensinar a ver televisão, a ouvir rádio e a ler jornais, não podendo continuar a cegueira de um sistema de ensino que de há muito perdeu o principal papel na socialização das crianças para a televisão e que insiste em não a estudar, nem a ensiná-la."
- O "Media Virus" do Douglas Rushkoff explica como a única educação televisiva que o autor teve foi a ver televisão em casa e não se saiu mal.
"O problema principal é que há um escasso debate público sobre a qualidade da comunicação social. Há ocasionalmente surtos de queixas e uma ou outra controvérsia, mas a comunicação social é a mais importante actividade que se passa no espaço público sem ser escrutinada."
- Sem dúvida, sobre o escasso debate público, com muitas dúvidas sobre o segundo ponto, tanto mais que a agenda mediática é comandada pela política e esta pela económica (ver "Mário Soares Alerta para Risco de "Afunilamento da Democracia" "e sublinha que o poder económico é superior ao mediático e ao político").
[...] "Uma é a de que esse escrutínio, a fazer-se, teria de ser feito na própria comunicação social e essa é avessa a discutir-se a si própria."
- Mas em que outro meio ou local a comunicação social foi tão discutida?!?!
"Tende a considerar-se que é pouco elegante que de forma regular no PÚBLICO se pudesse comentar o "Diário de Notícias" ou vice- versa, e muito menos que no PÚBLICO se pudesse criticar o PÚBLICO a não ser nas páginas dos "provedores dos leitores", de cuja eficácia duvido."
- Tal como se considera "pouco elegante" criticar os eurodeputados no Parlamento Europeu!!! É tanto uma questão corporativa como de defesa de emprego - será que PP está disposto a financiar uma "Brill's Content" em Portugal?
[...] "outra coisa é a existência de espaços regulares independentes onde, como há "crítica de televisão" como produto, o mesmo pudesse acontecer em relação a todo o sistema comunicacional".
- Mas se não há comunicação social independente, nem organismos de análise mediática independente, onde é que se vai fazer esta crítica??!!!
"Não me refiro como é óbvio aos estudos académicos sobre comunicação social, que são fundamentais mas cumprem outro papel."
- Nem eu...
"[Mas estes não substituem] uma ecologia de permanente debate e crítica. Só esta tem o efeito de educar o público e introduzir um efeito de rigor e vigilância que melhore o trabalho de edição - que tanta falta faz às redacções - e os níveis de exigência nas redacções."
- Sem dúvida!
"A segunda razão, talvez mais perversa do que os preconceitos corporativos de autodefesa profissional, é a escassez de informação sobre a própria comunicação social. Uma coisa é os órgãos de comunicação social não deverem ser a notícia, mas darem a notícia, outra perceber que eles são a notícia e ninguém a dá. Quer os procedimentos internos, que podem e devem ser escrutinados, como são normalmente os dos órgãos e instituições que actuam no espaço público, até ao conhecimento das redes de poder económico que os possuem, às escolhas, carreira e actividade pública dos que os dirigem ou nele trabalham, aos seu conflitos internos, debates de orientação, métodos de investigação utilizados, problemas de deontologia, tudo isso deveria ser normal matéria noticiosa, mas não é."
- Não é? Permito-me duvidar: quem hoje (se o desejar e se der ao trabalho de pesquisar fontes públicas) não sabe a quem pertencem os grupos mediáticos e o que fazem alguns dos seus responsáveis? Sobre o resto (procedimentos e "conflitos internos, debates de orientação, métodos de investigação utilizados, problemas de deontologia"), não vejo estes tópicos divulgados sobre os políticos ou outros sectores. Tem PP razão quanto aos media? Sim, embora tenha mais se defender o mesmo para os restantes sectores: porque não fala PP do Canal Parlamento, da sua obrigatória visão positiva sobre os deputados, cujas imagens são depois passadas aos canais generalistas? Quando foi a última vez que vimos um deputado a dormir? Eu quero vê-los a dormir e a trabalhar!!!
Devem os media ser polícias, sobre eles próprios ou a sociedade? De certeza que não devem ser ladrões da verdade. Sem dúvida que "o debate sobre tudo isto devia ser tão quotidiano como as notícias", diz PP. "Talvez assim houvesse menos erros por ignorância e desleixo, menos manipulação ideológica e mais esclarecimento."
Todos o desejamos, sem dúvida.
Respondendo à questão inicial, e em síntese, claro que os media devem ser escrutinados com mais atenção pelos media, tal como estes o devem fazer para outros sectores da sociedade: "uma tal linha de trabalho dos/nos media não pode ficar circunscrita ao jornalismo", afirma Manuel Pinto. Mas existe uma crítica dos media frágil tal como é a crítica a sectores económicos e políticos. Reclamar uma linha de acção forte num momento em que há cada vez menos jornalistas nas redacções é sintomático da linha de actuação dos políticos: intervir num sector quando ele está mais fragilizado.

VITAMEDIAS
Lista do FBI está cá há 18 meses: As notícias sobre a lista que terá sido enviada pelo FBI às autoridades portuguesas com nomes de pessoas que acederam a sites com imagens de pedofilia não passam de «contra-informação» e o documento já se encontra em Portugal «há um ano e meio».
O EXPRESSO On-Line teve acesso à última edição do Boletim da Ordem dos Advogados, que chegará às livrarias na próxima segunda-feira, onde está transcrita esta afirmação, feita por um elemento da Polícia Judiciária (PJ) no decurso de um debate sobre criminalidade informática.
[Também o ContraFactos "teve acesso à última edição do Boletim da Ordem dos Advogados, que chegará às livrarias na próxima segunda-feira", e está em condições de divulgar o relato concreto da conversa, cujo tema era a criminalidade informática:]
Manuel Lopes Rocha: Então como é que se vai resolver o problema, agora que vem nos jornais que o F.B.I. vai mandar para as autoridades portuguesas uma lista das pessoas que procuram a pedofilia na internet?
Rogério Bravo: Isso é má contra-informação! Essa lista já cá está há um ano e meio, e não tem nada a ver com os factos que aí aparecem. [...]
Pedro Amorim: Pegando neste exemplo, na tal lista do F.B.I. de que tanto se fala. A lista já é pelos vistos antiga mas foi anunciada nos jornais, e provavelmente terá deixado algumas pessoas assustadas. Mas essa lista determina que certo endereço IP esteve ligado ao site de conteúdos pedófilos. Era preciso obviamente a colaboração do ISP, para saber quem é que estava ligado a essa hora, com esse IP. Portanto o que o Sr. Inspector [Bravo] disse é que a utilidade dessa lista, e era o que eu temia, é zero.
Rogério Bravo: Do ponto de vista técnico é zero. [E explicita porquê.]

VITAMEDIAS
The Diversity Divide: The present media environment is being shaped by two seemingly contradictory trends: on the one hand, the digital revolution has lowered the costs of content production and distribution and greatly expanded the range of available channels to deliver it. At the same time, there has been an alarming concentration of the ownership of mainstream commercial media, with a small handful of multinational media conglomerates dominating all sectors of the entertainment industry. [...]
The greatest diversity will exist in pay media, the least in free media. So, what percentage of Americans will be left out in the cold if, say, the bulk of children’s and educational programming shifts off network and onto cable television? Twenty-six percent of American children have no access to cable television. What percentage of Americans will receive little or no benefit from the media diversity represented by cyberspace? Only 45 percent of children from low-income houses (under $15,000 per year) have any access to the Internet and less than 25 percent have access from their homes.

CONTAMINANTES
L'ONU contre la dépénalisation des drogues: Les profits de la drogue vont aux riches et non aux pauvres, certains pays développés sont irresponsables de dépénaliser car ça contrecarre la lutte mondiale contre la drogue, et ce n'est pas bien de prendre des drogues... Voilà ce que nous apprennent les experts de l'Organe international de contrôle des stupéfiants (OICS, un organisme dépendant de l'ONU), dans leur rapport 2002.

ZITE
Internet Tennis [ideia "back to basics"...]

ECO-TERROR
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the Web a series of declassified U.S. documents detailing the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980's, including the renewal of diplomatic relations that had been suspended since 1967. The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would "probably" include "an eventual nuclear weapon capability," harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld [sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense on January 20, 2001] to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983).
Did the US Help Saddam Acquire Biological Weapons?: Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate)
Mr. President, yesterday, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I asked a question of the Secretary of Defense. I referred to a Newsweek article that will appear in the September 23, 2002, edition. That article reads as follows. It is not overly lengthy. I shall read it. Beginning on page 35 of Newsweek, here is what the article says:
America helped make a monster. What to do with him - and what happens after he is gone - has haunted us for a quarter century.
Firing Leaflets and Electrons, U.S. Wages Information War: As of last week, more than eight million leaflets had been dropped over Iraq - including towns 65 miles south of Baghdad - warning Iraqi antiaircraft missile operators that their bunkers will be destroyed if they track or fire at allied warplanes. In the same way, a blunt offer has gone to Iraqi ground troops: surrender, and live.
But the leaflets are old-fashioned instruments compared with some of the others that are being applied already or are likely to be used soon.

VITAMEDIAS
Dan, Saddam et all:
[Dan] Rather's Saddam interview draws skeptics:
The newsman said it was all because of "hard work and luck," though an Associated Press report said Mr. Rather had the help of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, now an anti-war activist who met with Saddam on Sunday.
Mr. Clark has his own agenda. [...]
The Media Research Center took Mr. Rather to task yesterday for saying he had a startling scoop: Saddam had "challenged" President Bush to a televised debate. No such scoop, the center pointed out. Saddam had proposed the same thing in a 1990 interview with Mr. Rather.
Saddam Hussein, Reporter: After an interview that ran three times as long as scheduled, Hussein took Rather into his office and quizzed him extensively about "American public opinion and President Bush."
Trust CBS? I'd Rather not: I phoned my son, an active duty soldier, and asked him if he had seen the broadcast. With a degree in communications, and having worked for NBC News in London as an intern, he's a pretty sharp young media observer in his own right. "Wow, if nothing else, Dan Rather's got the interview of a lifetime!" was his response.
Well, the "interview of a lifetime" became more dubious when I delayed my usual departure time for the office, to watch Harry Smith on the CBS Morning News program. Smith, who I always viewed as a solid news citizen, sheepishly said something like this: "We're going to bring you some more summaries of Dan Rather's exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein, but we are have some technical problems with the actual tapes.
"The interviews were translated by government translators, and CBS needed time to re-translate the interviews, but the Iraqi government broadcast agency has still not provided CBS with the unedited tapes from the three-hour broadcast. When they do, we'll bring them to you, but in any case, Dan Rather will update on some other revelations from his remarkable interview."
This sparked my memory, of a brief mention Rather made in the Monday evening broadcast about the need for "double translation" of the interview.
It will take awhile for non-newshounds to work this out, but look at it this way. Either as part of the terms of this "exclusive" interview, or as a backstop to arrangements CBS felt were suspicious all along, the interview was not only government arranged and controlled, but when Rather posed a question, it was translated by an aide to Saddam, and his responses filtered for U.S. viewers by an aide to Saddam.

VITAMEDIAS
How the news will be censored in this war: A new CNN system of "script approval" – the iniquitous instruction to reporters that they have to send all their copy to anonymous officials in Atlanta to ensure it is suitably sanitised – suggests that the Pentagon and the Department of State have nothing to worry about. Nor do the Israelis.
Indeed, reading a new CNN document, "Reminder of Script Approval Policy", fairly takes the breath away. "All reporters preparing package scripts must submit the scripts for approval," it says. "Packages may not be edited until the scripts are approved... All packages originating outside Washington, LA (Los Angeles) or NY (New York), including all international bureaus, must come to the ROW in Atlanta for approval."
The date of this extraordinary message is 27 January. The "ROW" is the row of script editors in Atlanta who can insist on changes or "balances" in the reporter's dispatch.

VITAMEDIAS
Stop "la presse"! O visado refere hoje que "Le livre sur Le Monde déjà épuisé dans de nombreuses librairies", no primeiro dia da sua distribuição. No entanto, «Le Monde» réplique à Péan-Cohen, "dénonce un «livre-réquisitoire», sans répondre sur le fond" e "va engager des poursuites judiciaires contre les deux auteurs, les éditions Mille et Une Nuits, l'éditeur Claude Durand, «l'Express» et son directeur Denis Jeambar".
A publicação de excertos deste "La face cachée du Monde - Du contre-pouvoir aux abus" no L'Express ajudou ao sucesso.
É suficientemente francês mas bastante incisivo para nos questionarmos sobre o panorama nacional. Alguém quer atirar o primeiro capítulo?

.DE!
Descubra as diferenças entre isto e isto...

ECO-TERROR
The Biggest Threat To Peace: Which country really poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003? [Total Votes Cast: 589206]
North Korea: 5.7%
Iraq: 6.7%
The United States: 87.6%

ECO-TERROR
Talking About War Becomes Profitable Business for Speakers: corporate executives are booking politicians and political activists and thinkers to speak to their companies at an unprecedented rate.

VITAMEDIAS
PT confirma extinção da Lusomundo.net, trabalhadores temem desemprego
Sindicato dos Jornalistas acusa PT de despedimento colectivo camuflado
Equipa da Lusomundo.net Receia Desemprego
[Nem o DN nem o JN fizeram qualquer referência nas edições de hoje sobre o assunto... O DN tem no Última Hora que Jornalistas da Lusomundo.net recebem amanhã propostas de rescisão de contrato

VITAMEDIAS
Blogging comes to Harvard: America's oldest university has hopped on the Internet's hottest new trend, hiring software developer Dave Winer to help get students and faculty blogging.
Q - What impact has the blog had on the way information is shared, particularly with respect to journalism?
A - In some areas, like tech reporting, the Web logs have largely replaced the professionals.
Q - Hey, wait a minute.
A - News.com might be the exception. Think about what the landscape looked like five or 10 years ago, with just a handful of publications instead of a whole industry. People now get the information from each other and for each other using Web logs. There are still professional journalists writing, but a lot less. Web logs are journalism. Have they had a big impact? Absolutely. When a big story hits, I don't necessarily trust the professional journalists to tell me what's going on. If I can get the Web logs from the people who were actually involved, I'll take that.
A really remarkable thing came out from the BBC, where they asked amateur photographers to send them pictures. So they're jumping onto the trend that's going to grow and grow and grow. With the Columbia disaster, where did the pictures come from? Not from professional journalists.
Q - So you're saying that professional journalists don't provide any value, any context, any background that helps make sense of the news?
A - The typical news article consists of quotes from interviews and a little bit of connective stuff and some facts, or whatever. Mostly it's quotes from people. If I can get the quotes with no middleman in between--what exactly did CNN add to all the pictures? Maybe they earned their salaries a little bit, but Web logs have become journalism, and it's much richer. Journalism is a high calling, but it's really no more than points of view on what's taking place. I think the pros are going to use this tech, and they are doing it more and more.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Stop, Thief! Music and film execs obsess about our evil file-sharing ways, but demonizing the public they so desperately need won’t stop the free fall in the value of content.

ECO-TERROR
Blair talks war with MTV generation: The prime minister has decided to appear on music channel MTV as part of his latest offensive to win over the doubters about a possible war in Iraq.
The hour-long show, which will go out on Friday March 7, will take the form of a direct question and answer session with an audience of 16 to 24-year-olds.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Napster gets a new lease of life: Napster, the pioneering online music file swapping service, will be relaunched by the end of the year by its new owner as a legal subscription service.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Fears of Terror a Complication for Art Exhibits: Since 9/11, European institutions have become reluctant to lend their prize works of art to New York museums without new assurances of beefed-up security and increased terrorism insurance.

ZITE
How evil are you?
What number are you?

.DE!
Raised Middle Finger Is Ancient Gesture: Experts who have studied the history of the raised middle finger - and there are a few out there - have found written references to it as far back as ancient Greek and Roman times. The gesture's sexual meaning has always been roughly the same, and it has always been considered rude.
Those findings, the experts say, debunk a common legend that "flipping the bird" got its start at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. As that story goes, the victorious British supposedly raised their middle fingers after the French threatened to chop off the middle digits of captured English soldiers. But experts say there is no written proof of the story.

ECO-TERROR
Bush Cited Report That Doesn't Exist: There was only one problem with President George W. Bush's claim Thursday that the nation's top economists forecast substantial economic growth if Congress passed the president's tax cut: The forecast with that conclusion doesn't exist.
Bush and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer went out of their way Thursday to cite a new survey by "Blue-Chip economists" that the economy would grow 3.3 percent this year if the president's tax cut proposal becomes law.
That was news to the editor who assembles the economic forecast. "I don't know what he was citing," said Randell E. Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip Economic Forecast, a newsletter that surveys 53 of the nation's top economists each month.

VITAMEDIAS
Esta vem direitinha do Jornalismo e Comunicação e vale a pena ler: é sobre O pedo-filão da pedofilia (escrito por Rui Paulo da Cruz, jornalista em Lisboa e um dos fundadores do Observatório da Imprensa de Portugal):
Enaltecem alguns o papel da imprensa neste processo. E muitos jornalistas vangloriam-se, a pretexto deste caso, das virtudes do jornalismo de investigação. A minha opinião, para grande pesar de mim próprio, não podia ser mais oposta. Não vejo nas páginas dos jornais, nem nas matérias dos telejornais, nada que se pareça com investigação. E vejo muito pouco jornalismo.
Jornalistas e barões da mídia estão querendo passar para o exterior a idéia de uma grande investigação jornalística que não existiu. Tudo começou com uma reportagem de antecipação à prisão do primeiro suspeito, matéria que resultou de informações recebidas (e não investigadas) por uma jornalista de um membro da polícia que lhe é muito próximo. Excessivamente próximo, para o meu gosto, e para o que a ética aconselha...
[Era bom que explicitasse sobre essas "informações recebidas (e não investigadas) por uma jornalista de um membro da polícia que lhe é muito próximo"...]

CONTAMINANTES

Esta descobri no If Then Else, aqui. Admirável!

VITAMEDIAS
A Lei da Oferta e da Procura aplicada à Indústria dos Media
CONCLUSÃO
Este texto concretiza de uma forma sucinta alguns itens da Economia dos Mass Media.
Apesar da maioria dos exemplos se referirem a situações nos EUA ou na Inglaterra, esta análise também se verifica em Portugal, quer no desporto (a transferencia de Jardel para o Sporting) ou nos meios de comunicação social: na rádio com a mudança de José Carlos Malato e de Ana Lamy da Rádio Comercial para a Antena 3; ou na TV, com a mudança de Júlia Pinheiro (uma das mais proeminentes figuras da SIC) para a RTP e depois para a TVI.
A escassez de ‘talento’ no mercado associada à dificuldade em encontrar substitutos, faz com estes profissionais sejam raros e que os seus serviços sejam prestados mediante um valor substancialmente elevado que os seus pares. Quer por um prestígio já acumulado em experiências profissionais anteriores, quer por outras razões que os/as tornam escassos, estes indivíduos são peças fundamentais na indústria dos meios de comunicação social de hoje.
[É uma questão discutível. Tal como sucedia com o Herman José, que de alguma forma "fechava" a entrada a novos valores no humor televisivo, o mesmo se pode passar nos locais onde estes "talentos" estão inseridos. Estou errado?]

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Hollyblog: Are movie bloggers part of weblogging's natural evolution, or just a sign that another cool Net thing has been co-opted?
Blogger Peter Merholz, who has also been online at PeterMe.com since 1999, takes a more purist perspective. "It sounds to me like Hollywood trying to co-opt what those kids are doing," he said. "And we all point and laugh because they don't get it."
So what kind of weblog can come out of an industry notorious for controlling, packaging and airbrushing every ounce of information fed to the public? By definition, weblogs are immediate, honest and unfiltered. The question is: Can Hollywood blog?

VITAMEDIAS
O papel do provedor: A principal missão do provedor consiste em «atender as reclamações, dúvidas e sugestões dos leitores e proceder à análise regular do jornal, formulando críticas e recomendações». O provedor exerce, ainda, «uma crítica do funcionamento e do discurso dos media». A sua intervenção processa-se «sempre a posteriori» e antes de se pronunciar sobre textos assinados por jornalistas, deve solicitar «o esclarecimento do respectivo autor ou, na ausência deste, do editor da secção». [...]
O primeiro provedor data de 1809, na Suécia, e foi nomeado para atender as queixas dos cidadãos contra o Governo. [...] Em Portugal, o Diário de Notícias foi o primeiro diário de referência a nomear um provedor dos leitores, em 1997.

VITAMEDIAS
Cada canal seu ministro: Durão Barroso foi o ministro que em 2002 ocupou mais tempo na informação da SIC, enquanto Paulo Portas foi o preferido da TVI e Manuela Ferreira Leite teve mais «tempo de antena» na RTP2
Quanto ao Canal 1 as preferências são divididas entre Bagão Félix e Morais Sarmento.
[Leituras políticas possíveis? Durão na SIC do companheiro de partido, Paulo Portas com a ex-colega de partido Manuela Moura Guedes, Morais Sarmento porque é quem "manda" na RTP. Mas então, porquê Ferreira Leite na RTP2? Não há leituras possíveis...]

VITAMEDIAS
Technology, convergence mean opportunity: Blockbuster media mergers grab headlines, but opportunities provided by technology and partnerships with other media are brightest for small and medium newspapers

VITAMEDIAS
Danger: media at work: Five hundred journalists are due to join US troops. Their safety is paramount
There are a few cynics who think it is a short walk from "embedding" to "in bed with" and it would be a foolhardy news executive who simply rubs his hands with glee at the prospect of great action footage from the frontlines. There are so many other issues to overcome. Censorship. Balance. And, crucially, the dangers to which our journalists are potentially exposing themselves.
Hustling to the Front: Roughly 200 reporters recently participated in combat-training boot camps
For the first time since Vietnam, in fact, journalists will mingle with combat troops and support units to cover the action, some from the front lines. MTV, which used air time for videos like “Give Peace a Chance” during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, has 24-year-old Gideon Yago positioned in Kuwait. Since November the network has been airing daily news packages on Iraq, answering questions such as “Who is Saddam?” and gauging the mood of young GIs who are being sent to the Middle East. It seems as if the Pentagon is taking MTV’s war coverage seriously. It offered the network frontline access to action in Iraq, but MTV has so far declined.

VITAMEDIAS
Is Google too powerful? Perhaps the time has come to recognise this dominant search engine for what it is - a public utility that must be regulated in the public interest.
Google Village
[act.:] Smoogle: The Smart Googler's News, Views and Tools about online search

ECO-TERROR
1000 amendments to first treaty articles: The 13-member body putting together the articles for a future EU constitution has been inundated with over 1000 amendments to the first 16 draft articles.
Presented to Convention members two weeks ago, delegates are continuing to submit proposals for changes even after the deadline of last Monday evening.

VITAMEDIAS
Ratings Agency Says It Erred in Measuring Web Site Use: Web ratings services have faced questions about accuracy since they began trying to estimate audiences by projecting the behavior of a panel of presumably representative users. Despite their limits, ComScore's ratings, and those of its main competitor, Nielsen/NetRatings, are widely used by advertisers, investors, journalists and the Web sites themselves.
The biggest differences in ComScore's ratings, announced last week, come in its estimates of Web use at the workplace, always the most difficult to measure. Big companies in particular do not want employees to install the software that the ratings companies use to track Web site usage. When ComScore adjusted its formulas to account for the underrepresentation at big companies, its audience projections increased, in some cases sharply.

VITAMEDIAS
Press institute buys research site: US media resource web site The Journalists Toolbox (www.journaliststoolbox.com) has been purchased by the American Press Institute (API).
Founded in 1996 by former Los Angeles Times reporter Mike Reilley, the Toolbox lists more than 18,000 useful web sites for journalists. It will be incorporated with other online information and training services produced by the Institute's media centre division, which focuses on digital, online and new media.

VITAMEDIAS
US public turns to Europe for news: The threat of war in Iraq is driving increasing numbers of Americans to British and international news web sites in search of the broader picture.

CONTAMINANTES
More Than One Piece of Debris Hit Shuttle at Liftoff: During Columbia's liftoff, not one but three chunks of debris flew off the 15-story external fuel tank and hit the shuttle's left wing, according to a document NASA made public yesterday. Previously, the public inquiry into what caused the craft to break up on re-entry focused only on the largest chunk.

ECO-TERROR
How the Protesters Mobilized: Organizing a protest is fundamentally about logistics: where do people meet, how do they get on a bus, who will order portable toilets. Obviously, the Internet, like fax machines and copiers, has made the tasks easier. Before last weekend's protests, for example, people registered online for buses to New York. And a mass e-mail notice was sent out to New York protesters, informing them about public bathrooms in Midtown Manhattan and giving them a number to call in case of arrest.
But the Internet has become more than a mere organizing tool; it has changed protests in a more fundamental way, by allowing mobilization to emerge from free-wheeling amorphous groups, rather than top-down hierarchical ones.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Twilight of the CD? Not if It Can Be Reinvented

VITAMEDIAS
Blog addiction: You are addicted to blogging if you answer "yes" to at least 3 of the following questions:
Do you think about everything in terms of whether it will make a good blog entry?
Do you keep your computer in standby mode beside your bed and wake up at 2am to blog?
Do you skip lunch and blog instead?
Do you accept speaking engagements or make travel decisions based on whether they will make good blog material?
Do you have your RSS newsreader open during meetings and keep hitting "refresh"?
Do you sit around trying to figure out how you can redesign your job so you can blog more?
Do you think blogs will suddenly cause an emergent democracy and save the world?

CONTAMINANTES
[British] Government urges under-16s to experiment with oral sex, as part of a drive to cut rates of teenage pregnancy.
Family campaigners believe that the course, called A Pause, is having the reverse effect by exciting the sexual interest of children.

ECO-TERROR
Roll Call - Who's for war, who's against it, and why
Just shut up: Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
La culture, une habitude qui se prend jeune... et qui augmente avec le niveau de diplômes et le milieu socioculturel des parents.

VITAMEDIAS
Journalists at Australia's News LTD Overworked: A survey has found News Ltd (ASX:NCP) failed to provide a healthy work environment with nearly half of its journalists saying heavy workloads and poor resourcing were damaging their health.
The survey by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) covered all of News Ltd's metropolitan newspapers and comes in the wake of a three-year staff freeze.
MEAA federal secretary Chris Warren said the findings were indicative of what was happening in media organisations all over the world.
"The result is indicative of a general cutback in resources being experienced everywhere," Mr Warren said.

VITAMEDIAS
Pentagon's Recipe For Propaganda: The plan to "embed' reporters within military units is designed to restrict press coverage of the war, not encourage it.

CONTAMINANTES
Marijuana, Gateways and Circuses: A recent study has been misinterpreted to suggest that cannabis causes hard drug use. A close look tells a very different story.

ECO-TERROR
"Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage", by Philip Taubman
This book is the chronicle of these pioneers and their work, including the groundbreaking science and backbreaking failures that marked the swift passage of America’s aerial espionage from the lower atmosphere to the stratosphere to outer space during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. [...]
As the United States struggles today to overcome the new threats to its security, and to devise new methods of watching its enemies, it may find useful guideposts in the Eisenhower years. The ambition of Dwight Eisenhower’s espionage endeavors was exceedingly high -- to overcome a terrifying blindness that left the nation vulnerable to surprise attack and to defeat an acute fear of the unknown that threatened to disfigure American society. He succeeded.

CONTAMINANTES
Firms Offer Ways to Foil Drug Tests: Type "beat the drug test" into an Internet search engine, and you come up with more than 100 Web sites devoted to helping foil workplace drug screening.
It's part of a technology race, or as Barry Sample, director of science and technology at Quest Diagnostics Inc.'s Corporate Health and Wellness division, puts it, a marathon, pitting those who would defeat the screening against those who conduct it.

VITAMEDIAS
Accidental Privacy Spills: Musings on Privacy, Democracy, and the Internet
A journalist attends the World Economic Forum and writes her friends an email about the experience. Two weeks later, that email is on the Web, people she's never met are correcting her spelling, and the journalist is vowing to go back to longhand.
Welcome to the world of accidental privacy spills. Compared with the problem of keeping personal email private, copyright and spam are easy.

CONTAMINANTES
Comunicado do Conselho de Ministros: Isentam-se os prestadores intermediários de serviços de uma obrigação geral de vigilância sobre as informações que transmitem ou armazenam, ou da investigação de eventuais ilícitos praticados no seu âmbito. [O que faz todo o sentido...]
[A]firma-se que o envio de comunicações publicitárias, cuja recepção seja independente da intervenção do destinatário, ou por correio electrónico, carece de consentimento prévio do destinatário. [Adeus "spam"? E o que acontece a quem o fizer, nomeadamente fora do espaço europeu?]

VITAMEDIAS
L.A. Times Adds Web Feature with Fangs: While some media sites have tried blogs for columnists or reporters, the Los Angeles Times decided to start online Q&A with its critics. Ostensibly it's to help readers understand some of the finer points in a particular movie or music CD, but it's really an open window to the personality of critics that's just screaming to get out.

VITAMEDIAS
How "USN&WR" Will "Go To War" - If The U.S. Goes To War
"We will divide the magazine in two, with the front-of-the-book coverage on the war," says [U.S. News & World Report publisher Bill Holiber]. "Then, inside, we will do a second cover - with the logo - and a second table of contents to showcase and separate our 'News You Can Use' and other features. This gives advertisers a clear option to be in with 'non-war news,' but we're concerned that we are going to lose some anyway."

CONTAMINANTES
Taking the 'lug' out of luggage changed everything: Think of the icons of American culture that were utterly unknown three decades ago: The cell phone. The CD. Britney Spears.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Add another to the list: the rollerboard.
The what? That's luggage industry jargon for the carry-on black-bag-on-wheels that has taken over our airports - if not our planet.
"It's as big an invention as the home delivery of pizza," says Joanne Hayes-Rines, editor of Inventors' Digest.
But the familiar, 22-inch rolling black bag wasn't the brainstorm of a big luggage maker. It was concocted just 15 years ago by then-Northwest Airlines pilot Robert Plath for himself.

VITAMEDIAS
Now Bloggers Can Hit the Road: The meteoric rise of weblogging is one of the most unexpected technology stories of the past year, and much like the commentary that populates these ever-changing digital diaries, the story of blogging keeps evolving.
One recent trend is "moblogging," or mobile weblogging.
Blogging By Wireless: While most of the world will continue to post their weblog entries from a desktop PC, a new outfit based in Dublin, Ireland, called NewBay Software has designed a service called FoneBlog that could eventually let wireless customers create a blog using only a mobile phone.
Google Goes Blog-Crazy: Get ready for the third wave of blogging.
With its acquisition of Pyra Labs, Web-search juggernaut Google.com apparently sees dollar signs in the business of letting anyone easily publish their comments and thoughts on the Web.

VITAMEDIAS
Microsoft Tests the Blogging-Tool Waters: With Google buying Blogger creator Pyra Labs over the weekend, many are wondering when and if Microsoft will take a similar plunge into the Weblog-tools world.
It will come as a surprise to many that, with little fanfare, Microsoft officially entered the blogging-tool space last week. At the VSLive! developer conference, Microsoft unveiled five new sample applications built on top of its ASP.Net scripting environment. One of these five - the ASP.Net Community Starter Kit - is a blog builder.
"You could use this (Kit) to build a Weblog," confirms Microsoft developer division product manager Shawn Nandi.

VITAMEDIAS
BlogStreet: Visual Neighborhood helps you to see the inter-connectedness between blogs and is a way to map the social network of blogs. [Ferramenta com potencial mas não entendi as ligações apresentadas - sugestões?]

VITAMEDIAS
The Media: Terrorist Tool? Terrorists and the U.S. government are both using the media to achieve propaganda goals, according to Hafez Al Mirazi, bureau chief of the Al-Jazeera satellite TV network. "If CNN or Fox or others are not going to have breaking news flashing on their screens if Palestinians are killed, but only if Israelis are killed, then [terrorists] will go out and kill an Israeli," he said.

VITAMEDIAS
Shift magazine publishes its last issue: After several near-deaths and consequent re-births, Shift magazine, the financially troubled but influential tech culture magazine, may have given up the ghost for good.
The board of directors of St. Joseph Media, which controls Shift's publishing company, Multi-Vision Publishing Inc., yesterday announced that the magazine's upcoming March issue, already printed, would be its last.[...]
MacNeil said that he acquired the magazine "when everyone else had given up on it."
At the time, he said, he thought only that the tech sector was going through a rough patch that would last months, not years.
He said that in the magazine's history, only the 10th anniversary issue, released last fall, had been profitable.

.DE!
Years of fries, nary a burger flipped: Clare Kimmerle is 79. She's worked at the same McDonald's in Southampton, Bucks County, for nearly 33 years - since the day it opened.
She has resisted promotion to management - that would mean nights and weekends. She's happy to fill orders at the front counter or make fries - her forte. She is a lean, not-mean, fry machine.
She has never, in 32 years and 10 months of employment, flipped a burger. Never eaten a Big Mac. (Too filling.) Never worked the drive-through or worn a headset. "It would give me a headache," she says.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Mona Lisa smile secrets revealed: The smile on the face of the Mona Lisa is so enigmatic that it disappears when it is looked at directly, says a US scientist.
Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University said the smile only became apparent when the viewer looked at other parts of the painting. [...]
The smile disappeared when it was looked at because of the way the human eye processes visual information, said Prof Livingstone.
[Não funciona comigo, continuo a ver o sorriso quando olho para ele...]

.DE!
Jewel Thieves Pull Off 'Impossible' Heist: Only the robbers know how many stones were stolen, yet local newspapers are already calling it the biggest heist ever in the diamond-cutting capital of the world.
Thieves cleared out 123 of the 160 vaults in the maximum-security cellars of Antwerp's Diamond Center over the weekend, but the robbery was only discovered Monday.
Tuesday, police were still grappling to quantify the loss. But a decade ago, when only five vaults were robbed in the cellar where cutters and dealers traditionally store their wares, the heist was estimated at 4.25 million euros (US$4.55 million).
"We should not extrapolate but it is sure that the total will be much larger now," said Youri Steverlynck, a spokesman for the city's High Diamond Council. "We are certainly talking about many millions."

.DE!
Dumb thieves misspell name on forged check: Two would-be thieves would be $500 wealthier if only they paid more attention to spelling.
Police say two men tried to pass a $498 counterfeit payroll check bearing the name, "Boryhill Furmiture" last week, but they were turned away by a grocery store office assistant who noticed the misspellings. The company's correct name is Broyhill Furniture.

VITAMEDIAS
Reuters to Buy Multex: News and financial data provider Reuters Group, looking for new revenues amid a downturn in financial markets, is acquiring Web-based research distribution company Multex in a deal valued at about $195 million (121 million British pounds) in cash.
The announcement came as Reuters announced a loss of $630 million (394 million pounds) for 2002 and said it would cut 3,000 jobs, or 18 percent of its staff, by 2005 as it copes with lower sales from financial services customers. [...]
Multex is considered one of a group of Silicon Alley companies that went public during the dot-com boom and only one of a handful that survived the downturn in financial markets that began in 2000. It offers financial information and distributes research, via Web platforms, on over 25,000 companies around the world.

VITAMEDIAS
Quand la publicité avance masquée: Les publireportages se multiplient dans la presse
A l'ombre des pubs classiques, dont on conteste de plus en plus les slogans qui sonnent comme des ordres (tel «Just do it»), les «publis» pullulent. En 2002, se défiant de la récession, ils se sont envolés de 7 % !, soit 90,4 millions d'euros claqués par des annonceurs. Un vrai créneau qui représente aujourd'hui 4 à 5 % des investissements publicitaires dans les magazines, en premier lieu les féminins.

VITAMEDIAS
Best of the Net: Top Online Publishers
Business and Finance: CBS.MarketWatch.com
Computing and Technology: CNET.com
Entertainment: eUniverse.com
General News: CNN.com
Men's & Sports: ESPN.com
Newspaper Sites: NYTimes.com
Portals: Yahoo.com
Search Engines: Google.com
Travel: Expedia.com
Women's, Family & Health: iVillage.com

VITAMEDIAS
In-Stat/MDR names 'media mega players' and 'influencers': its report, ‘Top Dozen Worldwide Media Mega Companies Plus Four Influencers’, In-Stat/MDR names the companies that it maintains have achieved a critical mass and an economy of scale with which to lead market developments on a global basis. Many have recently made vociferous attempts to consolidate their assets and acquire local creative content companies.
According to In-Stat/MDR and reported by Daniel Jennet, AOL Time-Warner currently accounts for a massive 22.4 per cent of the group's value. Disney, Viacom, and Vivendi Universal account for around 10 per cent each and Sony, News Corporation, Cox Enterprises, and Bertelsmann each pull in about 5 per cent. The relevant players with less than 5 per cent of the group's value are though by In-Stat/MDR to occupy important niche markets, and are Lagardère SCA, GE/NBC, Grupo Televisa SA, and Liberty Media.

VITAMEDIAS
Web news sites now often seek personal data: More Internet news sites are demanding that readers pony up personal information - such as age, ZIP code and hobbies - for online content.
Media companies once feared that if they required registration, people would keep surfing. However, companies are finding that traffic doesn't drop significantly. The upside is that registration produces demographic data advertisers like.

VITAMEDIAS
Ministro Morais Sarmento apresentou queixa contra "Semanário", por uma manchete que, na última edição, o implicava no escândalo de pedofilia.
A queixa por abuso de liberdade de imprensa foi apresentada ontem e o advogado do ministro é o bastonário da Ordem dos Advogados, José Miguel Júdice.
Suspeitas de escuta telefónica a bastonário da Ordem dos Advogados vão ser investigadas: Ontem, o bastonário da Ordem dos Advogados enviou um comunicado aos jornalistas a indicar que tinha sido contactado pela provedora da Casa Pia sobre "se estaria correcto o procedimento de um advogado no que se refere ao facto de tendo ele, na sua opinião, acesso a depoimentos diversos, colaborar com a defesa de um dos arguidos".
José Miguel Júdice contactou por sua vez o Presidente do Conselho de Deontologia de Lisboa, já que a questão colocada por Catalina Pestana lhe era dirigida enquanto bastonário. [...]
José Miguel Júdice pediu ao procurador-geral da República para averiguar o caso e à direcção do jornal que o questionou para autorizar que sejam reveladas as suas fontes, identificadas como "próximas da provedora" da Casa Pia de Lisboa.

VITAMEDIAS
Spinning the Web: The Realities of Online Reputation Management: "Online reputation management" is reminiscent of the political term "spin control." But the Internet is not traditional media, and opportunities for controlling one's reputation are quite different - in theory unlimited, but in practice limited by an almost inherent lack of focus, and the countervailing weight of mainstream media.
[Um interessante contexto sobre a fiabilidade das fontes e a Web:]
A blogger may suffer deadline frenzy, but a blogger is not exactly tuned to the concept of publishing nonsense simply because it comes from a government source.

VITAMEDIAS
Their master's voice: Rupert Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world are backing it too
How lucky can Murdoch get! He hires 175 editors and, by remarkable coincidence, they all seem to love the nation which their boss has chosen as his own. The papers he owns in the country of his birth, Australia, are noticeably more muted than the New York Post and the Sun. But it doesn't require a semiologist to see that the leader-writers are attempting to break down stubborn public opinion: some 39% of Australians oppose a war, even with UN backing, while 76% oppose a war unless there is full-hearted international support.

VITAMEDIAS
You put Blogger in my Google! You put Google in my Blogger! Here's an early peek at what Blogger could look like now that Google has its multicolored mitts on it

Google goes public: Google doesn't release its financial figures--private companies are not required to--but according to industry insiders, the search company has surpassed break-even status and edged into profitability. Estimates for Google's revenue in 2003 are as high as $400 million, with gross margins in the range of 70 to 80 percent. That's just shy of the Internet's other star, eBay, which regularly posts gross margins of 80 to 90 percent.
[E, só porque fala do CF&A... :-)] Um milhão de weblogs em casa do Google
[act.:] Já repararam que, se forem ao endereço google.blogger.com apontado pelo Kottke, vai mesmo dar ao Blogger?!?!

VITAMEDIAS
CNN leaves 750 words out of Blix transcript: How in the world do you trust a 'news' organiztion like CNN, when they offer what purports to be a full transcript of Hans Blix' address to the UN Security Council but they leave out nearly 800 words - and those words just happen to be the ones where Blix refutes Colin Powell's 'smoking gun' presentation from earlier this week?
NOTE: Since the original publication of this article, CNN has added the missing text to their web page.

VITAMEDIAS
Is the End Near for Salon.com? Why can't Salon.com make it on ad dollars? Editor David Talbot says on the site: "... consider this stark fact: Approximately 80 percent of the ad dollars on the Web are funneled to the top 20 sites, all of which are run by corporate giants. The result is there's not much left over for independent publishers like Salon."

VITAMEDIAS
Les graffitis n'ont pas bonne presse: C'est de fait, un joli pavé dans la mare que l'histoire du magazine Worldsigns, exclu du jeu des aides à la presse, privé du fameux numéro de commission paritaire qui permet aux journaux de bénéficier d'une moindre TVA et d'un allégement des tarifs postaux. A condition qu'ils aient une périodicité au minimum trimestrielle, n'aient pas une diffusion gratuite et ne dépassent pas un certain volume de publicité. Alors pourquoi ce rejet de Worldsigns, trimestriel consacré à l'art du graffiti, vendu 4,90 euros et a priori peu susceptible d'attirer des cargaisons d'annonceurs ? Motif : incitation à tagger.

CONTAMINANTES
A Special Issue on Digital Reference: Digital Reference refers to a network of expertise, human intermediation and resources placed at the disposal of users in an online environment. It employs automated tools wherever possible, allowing human experts to concentrate on "hard questions". But human expertise is expensive and hard to find. Automated tools are less expensive to incorporate into online services and sites, allowing digital libraries to use tools that were, until recently, the province of a small cadre of people.
For decades, professional searchers, information brokers and reference librarians have had access to powerful and precise search engines and other tools. Information professionals learned well how to wield these tools, but average web users have not had the benefit of similar training. In short, the Web has brought to the general public many tools, but not much of the expertise required to use them.

CONTAMINANTES
As polémicas são o prato forte da ciência para os portugueses: Do que é que os portugueses ouvem falar quando lhes falam de ciência? Não é tanto das grandes descobertas mas antes da que é usada para fundamentar decisões políticas e administrativas.

ZITE
Bahianese le mix

VITAMEDIAS
'I lit the match': "What would Mohammed think? He would probably have chosen a wife from one of them." Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel's words about the Miss World contestants provoked religious riots in her country that left more than 200 dead - and a fatwa calling for her execution. Now, for the first time, she explains the events that changed her life forever

VITAMEDIAS
Spin caught in a web trap: Truth may be the first casualty of war but now in the age of instant news and views at the click of a mouse it's a hostile world for propaganda too
The most obvious thing that the web provides is access to a greater diversity of viewpoints and a more international viewpoint. Although you have to remember that people gravitate towards sites that reflect their own views, there's no doubt that there's the potential to access a wider diversity of opinion

VITAMEDIAS
audblog: a service that provides bloggers with the ability to post audio to their blogs from any phone.

CONTAMINANTES
Entering the Era of Genetic Testing and Surveillance: DNA is the ultimate biometric - you don't leave home without it.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Here You Hear It, There You Don't: Imagine standing in the frozen-food aisle of your supermarket, staring at a tub of your favorite double-fudge brownie ice cream. Suddenly, a voice comes out of nowhere to tell you there's a two-for-one sale on that very treat. But only you hear the message. In fact, the guy studying the cookie-dough choices 2 feet away is listening to a different ad - which you can't hear. [...]
inventor, Elwood G. "Woody" Norris, believes it could be used in everything from military communications systems to home electronics. "What if you could watch TV in bed at 1 a.m.," he muses, "and aim the audio just at yourself, so your sleeping spouse hears nothing?"

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Architects, in Theory: Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio

VITAMEDIAS
Cartoonista Vilhena em tribunal: O processo foi movido devido à utilização de uma imagem de Margarida Marante na revista de José Vilhena, apesar deste ter referido tratar-se de uma fotomontagem.

VITAMEDIAS
Google buys Pyra in big boost for blogging: Just 3 1/2 years old, Pyra's Blogger software has 1.1 million registered users, [Evan Williams, founder of Pyra] said. He estimated that about 200,000 of them are actively running weblogs. [...]
Google is known best for its search capabilities, but the Pyra buyout isn't the company's first foray into creating or buying Internet content. Two years ago, Google bought Deja. com, a company that had collected and continued to update Usenet newsgroups, Internet discussion forums. More recently, it created Google News, a site that gauges the collective thoughts of more than 4,000 news sites on the Net.
[Motor de busca líder + comunidade blog líder = ?...]
Bloogleplications: So yes, I sold the company I've poured the last four years of my life into. Everything is suddenly different. Well, not as sudden as it seems. This has been in the works for almost four months. Much of it, in excruciating uncertainly. But now I can talk about it! That doesn't mean I know much. For example, about the question: What happens now?
Gbloogle: what it all (may) mean: If the new Gbloogle of a year or two from now is able to treat all blogs as first-class citizens, this is the best news ever for blogdom.
Google buy Pyra: They've got one-to-one connections. Links. Now they've realised - like Ted Nelson - that the fundamental unit of the web isn't the link, but the trail. And the only place that's online is... weblogs. [...]
So, the GOOGLE TOOLBAR tracks everything you do on the web, giving you low-level anonymous trails tying the web together. These are analagous to the strings of physics, or the rows and columns of Excel. This is 1, what you see.
Now there's the semantics, the meaning extracted from these, and that's done with the human mind. This is 2, what you do. What you choose to elevate. Now these trails are the basic units.
The combination of the two is startling.

CONTAMINANTES
Congestion charging: A congestion charge for motorists driving into central London was introduced on February 17th. It is politically dangerous, but experience elsewhere in the world shows that it can be made to work
[Portugal com pouco menos de 35 minutos de média diária gastos em transporte na ida e volta do emprego, a Itália com menos de 25 e a líder Grã-Bretanha com mais de 45 minutos]

VITAMEDIAS
AOL Zaps AOLTV After 3-Year Run: AOL Time Warner has quietly tuned out AOLTV, the interactive television initiative it launched three years ago with enough hype to sink a ship.
[A]n executive at AOL Time Warner said the initiative is "basically dead and forgotten.
"I think AOL saw Microsoft making early inroads into the space, and felt compelled to compete," the executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
[Isto faz lembrar a posição do ministro Morais Sarmento quando afirmava no congresso da APDC que a RTP devia apostar no lado interactivo, alguém a questioná-lo de que tudo isso estava a ser abandonado em vários países e ele a retorquir que eram opiniões e não discutia opiniões...]

VITAMEDIAS
Quality Falls at Big TV Stations: Report Says TV Stations Owned by Bigger Companies Tend to Produce Lower-Quality Newscasts

VITAMEDIAS
[Como as anedotas que circulam pela Internet chegam aos jornais...] Uma anedota contra a guerra

VITAMEDIAS
Desemprego de jornalistas triplicou em dois anos: A Caixa de Previdência e Abono de Família dos Jornalistas registou em 2002 259 inscrições para pedidos de subsídios de desemprego - num universo de 4500 beneficiários. [...]
O Sindicato dos Jornalistas, que está a ultimar um relatório sobre o desemprego no sector, estima em 500 o número de jornalistas que, em 2002, ficaram sem trabalho. A televisão foi o meio responsável pelo maior volume de despedimentos, seguida pelas publicações "on-line", mas o fenómeno foi em todas as vertentes transversal: todos os meios, todas as idades, ambos os sexos foram profundamente afectados.

CONTAMINANTES
Electronic Discovery: A How-to Guide for Litigators

A ContraFactos & Argumentos comemora um aninho. Nasceu como "newsletter" por email - porque havia factos nesse tempo de argumentos - e já é blog. Experimenta o meio e, infelizmente, não vai acabar como a Salon porque não pode... Prendas? Um grande Animatrix para todos!

CONTAMINANTES [de S. Valentim :-)]
N.C. town has most Love in country: Love is in the air in Cabarrus County. It's also in the phone book - many, many times.
Cabarrus has the nation's highest concentration of people named Love -- eight times more per capita than the national average -- according to a Valentine's-week study by a San Diego marketing research firm.
Surfing for Love: Many Internet users are trying to "click" with someone online, as looking for love becomes a popular Web activity - and big business too. Growing traffic to various dating and Valentine's Day-related Web sites is translating into millions of dollars in paid content and consumer spending.
Has Cupid Met Its Match? Addictive Online Fantasy Game Brings Relationship Turmoil
Who'd have thought technology would ruin Valentine's Day?
Software tries to make love connection: On Valentine's Day 2003, it's apparent that in the art of romance, Xs and Os have been replaced by ones and zeros.
Take Dating 1.0, an application for handhelds that keeps track of a lot more than hand-holding.
"The purpose of the dating menu,'' the Dating 1.0 welcome screen says, "is to keep track of the people you date and rank them on their potential.''

PHOTO-GRAFIA
Clic-clac, bravo les photographes!: Eric Grigorian, le lauréat [...] a remporté vendredi à Amsterdam le World Press Photo 2003

CONTAMINANTES
Happy Birthday, Dear Double Helix: Fifty years ago, a birdwatcher and a physicist discovered the secret to life: the double helix structure of DNA.

VITAMEDIAS
Two New Alerts for Web Searches: Googlert and SearchAlert.net are two new free services that offer email alerts when new search engine results are available

VITAMEDIAS
NYTimes.com gears ads to surfers' habits: New York Times Digital, in a new test, is letting advertisers reach visitors with demonstrated interests, in what could be a new dawn of personalized advertising on the Web.
The company, the online arm of The New York Times, this month started selling advertisers on a new pitch: reach customers who show interest in health, entertainment, technology, sports or finance on any news page of the site. Called "Wide Angle Targeting," the program gives advertisers the inside track on people who've displayed desirable preferences that play into what they're selling.

VITAMEDIAS
Red Herring Founder Unveils 'Super-Blog' for Business Geeks: "The impact of the Internet on the media business will be in forcing it to become more participatory," says Perkins. So this time he has completely foregone print—the company is only online. And he sees in the burgeoning blogging movement, in which everyone has a voice, the seeds of the next media revolution: "The bloggers have shown us the value of truly participatory media sites, so we’re just going to bundle it up and polish it and commercialize it." [...]
"This is the eBay-ization of media," says Perkins. "We’ve created the arena, like eBay did. We organize the world, then invite members to come in and play." He calls the site a "super-blog," comparing it to Slashdot.org, a phenomenally successful site for serious technophiles that now claims over two million members. "While Slashdot is for techie geeks, AlwaysOn is for business geeks," he says. He will impose editorial order by continuing to fine-tune topic areas, recruiting appropriate bloggers, and contributing heavily himself.

VITAMEDIAS
Let's Iraq 'n' roll: Despite the danger, TV news executives say they have no shortage for takers for an assignment in the war zone.
"Almost everyone has volunteered," said Chuck Lustig, director of foreign news coverage for ABC. "They're all professional journalists - they want to be part of the coverage of this story."
U.S. Military Document Outlines War Coverage: The U.S. military plans to take extraordinary steps to provide the media access to combat zones in Iraq, but only after making reporters agree to a series of strict prohibitions
Wanted: BBC war reporter (MMS phone required): [T]he BBC website is offering its readers the chance to become bona-fide reporters at this weekend’s anti-war demonstrations - and all they need to take with them is an MMS phone.

ECO-TERROR
Why we must invade Iraq right now :-(

ECO-TERROR
Globalisation cited as threat to US security: The heads of the main US intelligence agencies warned on Tuesday that globalisation, which has been the driving force behind the expansion of the world economy, has become a serious threat to US security.
In a bleak assessment of the threats facing the US, the Senate intelligence committee was told that nuclear proliferation, failing economies, rising anti-Americanism and terrorist recruiting pose grave dangers.
"Under the right conditions, globalisation can be a very positive force, providing the political, economic and social context for sustained progress," said Vice-Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency.
"But in those areas unable to exploit these advantages, it can leave large numbers of people seemingly worse off, exacerbate local and regional tensions, increase the prospects and capabilities for conflict and empower those who would do us harm."

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Exhibition attendances in 2002: The busiest shows are rarely the most enjoyable

VITAMEDIAS
Poucos Leitores, Muitos Jornais: Portugal tem a segunda mais baixa taxa de leitura e compra de jornais da União Europeia e apenas 19 por cento dos portugueses afirmam ler jornais diariamente. Destes leitores, somente 60 por cento declaram, segundo dados do Observatório da Comunicação, ler ou folhear títulos de imprensa regional. Por isso, uma das medidas urgentes é a criação de subsídios para campanhas de promoção da leitura, embora falte ainda fazer uma caracterização do perfil do leitor português por regiões.
No Instituto da Comunicação Social, encontram-se registados quase 4300 títulos - entre nacionais, regionais, confessionais e de especialidade -, 900 dos quais de imprensa regional. Isto faz de Portugal, segundo Feliciano Barreiras Duarte, o país União com maior taxa de títulos por mil habitantes, mas com menos leitores.
Os 900 jornais regionais existentes em Portugal empregam directamente cerca de 2600 trabalhadores, ao passo que as 300 rádios locais existentes dão emprego a perto de 5600.

ECO-TERROR
Lawsuit Challenges Bush Authority on Iraq: A group of U.S. soldiers, parents of soldiers and six U.S. House members filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday seeking to stop the president from launching a war against Iraq without a declaration of war from Congress.
The lawsuit seeks an immediate injunction against Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to prevent them from launching an invasion of Iraq.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Music Industry Targets Workplace Downloaders: The recording industry directed its anti-piracy campaign at large companies in the United States, Europe and Asia on Thursday, warning them that employees are illegally downloading music on company time.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a global trade group representing the major music labels, said it had begun issuing brochures to thousands of companies spelling out the legal and technological dangers of giving employees access to online file-sharing networks.

.DE!
390,000 Jedis There Are: Seven people in every thousand in England and Wales gave their religion as 'Jedi' in the 2001 Census.

VITAMEDIAS
Why Reality TV Is Good For Us: Stop whining about how prime time's hottest genre is destroying America, and enjoy some great television
Indeed, for all the talk about "humiliation TV," what's striking about most reality shows is how good humored and resilient most of the participants are: the American Idol rejectees stubbornly convinced of their own talent, the Fear Factor players walking away from vats of insects like Olympic champions. What finally bothers their detractors is, perhaps, not that these people are humiliated but that they are not. Embarrassment, these shows demonstrate, is survivable, even ignorable, and ignoring embarrassment is a skill we all could use. It is what you risk - like injury in a sport - in order to triumph. "What people are really responding to on these shows is people pursuing their dreams," says American Candidate producer R.J. Cutler. A reality show with all humiliation and no triumph would be boring.
Viewers love reality: Another word for these shows is "humilitainment", where viewers cheer and jeer at participants who become freak-show stars.
"This kind of entertainment is nothing new," says film scholar Lester Friedman.
"There were the Romans and the Coliseum. In the Elizabethan period, hangings and various other forms of execution were public spectacles.
"And there's a long tradition of carnivals and sideshows showcasing unfortunate people performing bizarre acts."
But participation in the past was largely involuntary. These days, humilitainment is big business (and cheap to produce) and people are lining up for their chance of 15 minutes of fame.
[15 minutos para eles, uma eternidade nas programações, que prometem continuar nesta senda?
Um dos "humilitainment" citados - "Strip Search (a raunchy version of Popstars)" - já foi alegadamente adquirido por um canal português. Como me explicaram, "é uma coisa tipo casting pelo país de stripers, evidentemente masculinos, para ensinar 6 deles a cantar, dançar e "stripar". O concurso teve um sucesso enorme na Nova Zelândia.
Tipo os "Excesso" mas com strip... O apresentador anda pelo país em audições com os potenciais candidatos às eliminatórias do concurso. No final sobram 6 jovens robustos que na Nova Zelândia fizeram shows pelo país já depois do final do programa. Uma coisa linda..."
Sem dúvida, "uma coisa linda"... ]
[act.:] 'Are You Hot?' struts its stuff: Skin, sex appeal: Exteriors are all that matter in ABC's new stripped-down reality contest, Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People, a swimsuit competition where the only talent needed to win $50,000 is the ability to turn around.

VITAMEDIAS
'Nano publishing' pushing the boundaries of journalism: Welcome to the world of "nano publishing'' - an emerging brand of Internet-based journalism that is helping shape the future of news.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Nodal point: William Gibson talks about how his new present-day novel, "Pattern Recognition," processes the apocalyptic mind-set of a post-9/11 world.
WG - I was about 100 pages into the book on Sept 10th. Then I got up on Sept. 11th and whoa - nodal point!

ECO-TERROR
U.S. Tries E-Mail to Charm Iraqis: A campaign to reach out and touch the Iraqi people through e-mail apparently hasn't been as successful as the United States had hoped, because the Iraqi government censors all e-mail coming into the country.
Over the past month, the U.S. military has periodically sent e-mail to Iraqi military and government officials urging them to protect their families by helping U.N. inspectors and turning away from Saddam Hussein.
U.S. government officials won't comment on the campaign, but according to sources in Iraq and Iraqis living in the United States, each time the e-mails are sent, Internet access all over Iraq soon suffers a "service outage." Service resumes after the U.S. military missives have been purged from inboxes.

ECO-TERROR
Les mathématiques s'attaquent au terrorisme: En fouillant bien, on aurait pu détecter dans les statistiques l'imminence d'un gros attentat terroriste vers la fin 2001. Todd Sandler, professeur à l'Ecole de relations internationales de USC (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), n'avait évidemment pas prévu les attaques du 11 septembre, mais quel ques mois auparavant, il avait publié, avec son collègue Walter Enders (Université d'Alabama), une étude mettant en évidence un cycle de deux ans dans l'activité du terrorisme international. Le dernier gros épisode datait de la fin 1999...

VITAMEDIAS
All the search that's fit to print? Journalism ethics experts caution that commercial search on news and information sites can blur the lines between editorial and advertising. While most of the publishers that are currently running paid searches mark their listings with terms like "sponsored" in accordance with urging from the Federal Trade Commission, some ethics experts say that doesn't go far enough.

VITAMEDIAS
Times story was out to lunch: The New York Times illustrated a story about the supposed decline of power-lunching the other day with a photo of a near-empty restaurant - but the picture was actually taken at 3:30 p.m.

CONTAMINANTES
Most people kiss the right way: For the past two and a half years, neuroscientist Onur Güntürkün has hung around airports, railway stations, parks and beaches, watching people kiss. "After two years, I could feel when people were approaching to kiss," he says.
His motives were scientific.
Study: Couples Love Kissing Right: A German researcher has found that your kissing partner is twice as likely to turn his head to the right than to the left for smooching.

ZITE
Flash Mind Reader

ECO-TERROR
UK news agency sent second Bin Laden tape: A media bidding war has broken out for a second audio tape, allegedly freshly recorded by Osama Bin Laden, obtained yesterday (11 February 2003) by the Birmingham-based online news agency, Al-Ansaar.
In the new recording, Bin Laden is said to predict his own death in an act of 'martyrdom' later this year.
[Notável coincidência e "timing" nestas aparições de Laden...]

VITAMEDIAS
Online news eclipses print media: Opinion pieces in both The Guardian and Newsday.com this week claimed that the web is becoming a more popular news source than print. [Mas não será uma opinião mais generalizada nos jornalistas do que nos leitores em geral?...]

.DE!
Did the Swiss build Stonehenge? Stonehenge, the renowned and mysterious ancient monument seen as a symbol of Britain, may actually be a marvel of Swiss - or even German - engineering.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Digital Entertainment Jumps the Border: Popular culture has become one of America's biggest exports. Every year the U.S. sells more than $60 billion worth of music, books, movies, television programs and computer software to consumers abroad. And this estimate does not even include the revenues made by illegal copying and other forms of piracy. In Europe or Canada, one need only flick on the television, buy a compact disc or browse the entertainment section of a newspaper to see the ubiquity of American culture.
Pirates & Paranoids: Recording Restricted: "Disney has no asset more valuable than the film The Lion King," says Preston Padden, a Disney executive vice president. "We have presented, and would like to present again, The Lion King free over the air on Sunday night on ABC's Wonderful World of Disney. But if doing so means that perfect digital copies will be posted to file-sharing sites on the Internet, then we would have to seriously reconsider putting it on ABC."
But the fact is, consumers expect high-quality recording to be available.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Whose Song Is That, Anyway? A new system designed to track the distribution of music downloads is being described by analysts and industry representatives as a positive step for sites that sell digital music on the Internet, but how these electronic tags will affect file-trading on peer-to-peer networks remains uncertain.

CULTURAS IN VITRO
Kodachrome Moment: How William Eggleston's revolutionary exhibition changed everything.
The show was a milestone, an annunciation of the coming of color; thereafter, black and white would come to seem slightly quaint and precious - evocative, as it is in, say, Cindy Sherman's film stills, of a distant past. New art photography would be almost all chromatic: Nan Goldin, Mitch Epstein, Richard Prince, and Andreas Gursky all owe the ready acceptance of their work - though not their work itself - to Eggleston's breakthrough.
Now, I'll ask you to guess what year all this happened - and bear in mind that color movies became common in the '30s and color television was first broadcast in 1955. So the first one-man show of color photographs at the high temple of modern vanguard photography was…?
1976.

CONTAMINANTES
How will genetics change our lives? TIME invited a panel of scientists and science writers to close their eyes and imagine the world 50 years from now. This is what they see

CULTURAS IN VITRO
The CD Price-Fixing Settlement Explained or How Oligopolies Invest
- Amount Fed Trade Commision accuses industry of overpricing during period in question (WSJ 5 Feb 2003): $480,000,000
- Sum of Cash and Non-Cash Industry Payments: $143,075,000
- Return ($): $336,925,000
- Return (%): 235%
Conclusion: Not a bad investment!!!

CULTURAS IN VITRO
75th Academy Awards Nominees - Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

VITAMEDIAS
Elsevier Announces New Procedures for Retracting Online Articles: Elsevier Science announced new procedures last week for handling journal articles in its databases that are the product of plagiarism or other research misconduct. Librarians and scholars have complained that the Anglo-Dutch publisher was jeopardizing the integrity of scholarship by removing articles from its databases with little explanation.