30 abril 2004

VITAMEDIAS

O advento dos "magablogs": And Now, For A Little Bloggery: Lately, however, established media have glommed on to blogging. Magazines as diverse as Variety, Christianity Today, Business 2.0, The New Republic and The American Prospect are sponsoring their own blogs, committing editing time, money, prominent space on their Websites and their journalistic reputations to a format that was supposed to be all about amateurs controlling the microphone.
Are these new “magablogs” the tip of a trend? Will blogs, like Websites, become an essential adjunct to print magazines and a source of badly needed revenue? Or will magazine bloggery remain a quirky offshoot of a magazine’s Internet presence-a marketing gimmick that gives the brand a dose of hipness and provides an ego boost for star writers?
The answer is yes
. Magazine blogs are promotional tools and they are becoming useful (and possibly sponsorship-ready) adjuncts to print and online brands, particularly in the b-to-b category.

VITAMEDIAS

Internet Top Media Choice for Women: The Internet is a leading media choice of women, and working women spend an average of 40 minutes a day online for non-work-related surfing [...]
In terms of using the Internet, women are "surchers," doing a hybrid of surfing and searching within a number of their favorite sites.
18-34s Favor High-Tech: Nine guys, nine laptops, nine cell phones, five TV sets, and not a single phone line. The off- campus college household, a scenario highlighted in an ethnographic study released last week, underscores the multitude of media options competing for the attention of 18- to 34-year-olds, who have grown up during a time of rapid technological change.
The qualitative research, conducted by Greystone Communications managing director John Carey on behalf of the Online Publishers Association, was based on observations and interviews with 42 people in this age group, in five states.
A major commonality among the participants was that the Web has become a dominant media for them because it fits into their chaotic and unpredictable schedules. The Internet is perceived as a source of information and entertainment and is described as "accessible" and "convenient," said Carey.

ECOPOL

Flawed Democracies: No single country achieved a "very strong" ranking on the Public Integrity Index [...]
Of the 25 countries, just six ranked "strong": the United States, which finished first, followed by Portugal, Australia, Italy, Germany and South Africa. [...]
Portugal is the only country where civil servants who report corruption are "often" protected from recrimination or other negative consequences.

ECOPOL

European election campaign ‘blog’ is a first: The European Parliament election campaign’s first on-line diary – a web log or “blog” – will be launched by the Party of European Socialists (PES) this weekend in a move to counter voter apathy.

TECNOSFERA

John Gilmore's horrific, dystopian view of an RFID world: People with RFID chips in their clothing, books, bags, or bodies could be targeted by "smart projectiles" that will zero in on that particular Smart. [...]
Imagine being able to bury an explosive in a roadway - that would only go off when a particular car drove over it.

TECNOSFERA

Tudo sobre o Google: Google IPO To Happen, Files For Public Offering

CONTAMINANTES

Blogs: Papel das Bibliotecas

29 abril 2004

.DE!

Desabafos de um rejeitado (autor anónimo)

Às vezes a vida é difícil.
No outro dia, uma rapariga telefonou-me e disse: "Queres vir cá a casa? Não está cá ninguém."
Eu fui. Ninguém respondeu, não estava mesmo ninguém.

Tem sido um dia difícil.
Levantei-me de manhã...
Vesti uma camisa e saltou um botão. Peguei na minha pasta e a pega partiu-se.
Estou a ficar com medo de ir à casa de banho...

Posso dizer que os meus pais me odeiam.
Os meus brinquedos do banho eram uma torradeira e um rádio.

A minha mãe nunca me deu de mamar.
Ela dizia que só gostava de mim como amigo.

O meu pai anda com a fotografia de um miúdo que já vinha quando ele comprou a carteira.

Quando eu nasci, o médico foi à sala de espera e disse ao meu pai: "Tenho muita pena. Fizémos tudo aquilo que podíamos. Mas mesmo assim ele conseguiu sair".

Lembro-me do dia em que fui raptado e enviaram um bocado de um dedo meu ao meu pai...
Ele disse que queria mais provas.

Uma vez, quando me perdi, vi um polícia e pedi-lhe ajuda para encontrar os meus pais.
Disse-lhe: "Acha que alguma vez os vou encontrar?"
Ele disse: "Não sei, miúdo... há tantos sítios onde eles se podem esconder".

Trabalhei numa loja de animais.
As pessoas estavam sempre a perguntar se eu crescia muito ou se ficava só daquele tamanho.

Fui ao médico.
"Doutor, todas as manhãs quando me levanto e me olho ao espelho fico com vontade de vomitar. O que se passa comigo?"
Ele disse: "Não sei, mas a sua vista está óptima"...

VITAMEDIAS

Palavrar: agora trabalho sozinho, desgarrado de uma redacção, faço a minha agenda, raramente vou a conferências de imprensa, a cházinhos com políticos ou a tertúlias da “malta” dos jornais e das assessorias, e ainda por cima o grosso do meu trabalho é na qualidade de correspondente na zona de Lisboa para um jornal regional. Passando ao largo do desprezo a que é votada a comunicação social regional e local, principalmente entre as novas gerações, aqui na altaneira capital desta pindérica nação, os contactos (frequentes, da minha parte…) que tenho tido com esta classe profissional, nos mais diversos organismos, estatais, partidários, sindicais, associativos, privados, etc., tem sido das experiências mais negativas desta fase da minha carreira. A maior parte deles, para resumir curto e grosso, não me passa cavaco.
SMS, MSN e MAIL: O sindicato e os jornalistas do Porto e da Capital do Império não fazem a menor ideia do que se passa nas redacções desse país real.

VITAMEDIAS

EU Demands More Access For New Media At Olympic Games: European Union regulators are asking Olympic Games broadcasters and organizers for assurances that mobile telephone and Internet operators can show live images from this summer's Athens sports events.

CONTAMINANTES

IBM's service science: For years, IBM has been one of the world's leading research bodies when it comes to semiconductors, databases, electron microscopes and other "hard" sciences.
Now, Big Blue is getting into social sciences. [...]
Corporations are notorious for introducing technology without considering the human consequences.

TECNOSFERA

A Internet faz bem à saúde: Net more important than morning coffee? Given the choice at work between personal use of the Net or a morning cup of coffee, employees say the coffee can go, according to a survey released Wednesday by Websense, which makes software designed to let companies control employee Net access.

TECNOSFERA

Rivals to Look for Data in Google Numbers: If Google Inc. opens its books this week as many still expect, its rivals will be hoping to unravel one of Silicon Valley's most closely guarded secrets: how much it makes every time someone on the planet Googles.
Larger competitors, such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., are likely to seek clues on Google's profitability and how much the secretive firm is investing in new technology, as they seek to carve out a chunk of the online search market, analysts said.

ECOPOL

Reader Perceptions of Political Opinion in Weblogs: You are invited to be involved in the evaluation of weblog (blog) authors’ political orientation. This study is part of a larger effort to develop computer programs for detecting political sentiment.

28 abril 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Editors! Beware Management Grubs Taking Over News: "the ever-more-strident rhetoric of journalism management gurus" now threatens the editorial integrity of America’s newspapers by seeking to break down the traditional separation of advertising and marketing from influence over editorial content. And yet the news pages of America’s newspapers, as far as I can see, have not done much to investigate the so-called "discipline" that is transforming them.
Will it ever happen, this investigation?
[...]
It’s time for newspapers to investigate their own consultants the way they (finally) went after fakery in the rest of the corporate world. After all, newspapers have all these employees working for their "brand" whose job it is to investigate things. Find out stuff. Like whether institutions are effective or just slick-talking shams. These employees are called "reporters." Who is going to be the editor brave enough to sic some reporters on the corporate consultants who are jargonizing the integrity of newspaper culture away?
Lyne Disease: The affliction of journalists who want to be CEOs
Almost every journalist envies his sources sometimes. Most journalists find that the executives or celebrities or politicians they're covering have far more power and money than they do—even though they share similar educational credentials and backgrounds. Journalist envy is particularly acute in business, where even the dumbest source makes oodles more money than the smartest reporter. After interviewing mutual fund managers, investment bankers, and CEOs—especially folks who are underperforming—some journalists conclude they could do the job better. Sometimes they can. But mostly they don't.

VITAMEDIAS

What do you do when other bloggers steal from you?: In this case, stealing means posting on their site something that you have created, without mentioning that you are the author and without giving a link to your post. This is theft, especially when a copyright notice is shown at the site they're ripping off. [...]
The other offender's blog is in Portuguese, apart from its title which is Black Dock. His name is Miguel and he put my "Rational" cartoon (also posted by me in Sept.2003) at the head of his very long post about the stupidity of human beings (March 28 2004).
All I ask of both these people is to include proper credits but neither of them have replied to my e-mail.
What happened to You Link me, I Link you: I’m sick to the teeth with the Bloggers who have gone all arty-farty on me and decided for whatever reason, to take their Links off of their front page and deposit them on a specially made and hard to find poncy Link Page

ECOPOL

Eastern Washington teen's sketches attract Secret Service scrutiny: The 15-year-old boy's art teacher turned the drawings over to school administrators, who notified a police officer assigned to work with the school.

VITAMEDIAS

A BUMPER CROP: For all the well-documented woes of the magazine business, 2003 brought more birth announcements than obituaries. It was, in fact, a huge year for launches. The number of launches jumped by 21 percent — the largest percentage gain in the 25 years that I have been tracking start-ups (the second-largest leap was 1998, when there was a 20 percent increase over the previous year). Although it was a big year for quantity, quality was another matter.

VITAMEDIAS

The Web Has Created Little Original Media Value [with long-term traction]
[Simon Dumenco], The media observer and editor of the newly relaunched Colors magazine says that a negligent press has allowed U.S. leaders to "deceive and distort," and blogs are "generally overrated" but "do make a difference."

TECNOSFERA

Worker, Hack Thyself: A familiar cry among hackers these days goes something like this: There's no patch for human stupidity.
Actually, there is one
. "Education," says Barry Kaufman, the chief technology officer of the Intense School, a hacker bootcamp for corporate IT staffs. "Technical controls have just about caught up with the hackers. It's humans that are the weakest link in the chain."

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Will publishers perish? The rise of print-on-demand technology and websites devoted to self publishing is making it ever easier for writers to bypass conventional publishers
Many authors have become frustrated with conventional publishers, entrenched by market projections, annual styles and the unmentionable word ''returns.''
The alternative is self-publishing.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Take my songs - please, says Bowie: David Bowie has invited fans to bootleg his music - and he's offering prizes for the most creative theft.

TECNOSFERA

A Web of Electronic Denial: Spyware is far sneakier than we had ever imagined. [...]
The same goes for music files, games and video clips -- hardly anyone will admit to downloading, installing or using these things on their work computers, but despite protestations of innocence, somehow these time-, space- and bandwidth-wasting applications and files have infested corporate computers across America [...]
Six percent of the employees surveyed admitted that they have downloaded spyware onto their office computers. But network administrators responding to the same survey estimated that almost 30 percent of the computers in their office networks have been infected by spyware at one time or another.

26 abril 2004

TECNOSFERA

Social Computing: Getting Ahead of the Blog: Decision makers should begin by understanding the basic capabilities of blogs, determining where success has been achieved (consumer and business), and assessing whether such success can be applied to their own circumstances. To aid in brainstorming around possible solution scenarios, strategists should segment applications into some general groupings. We recommend the following five categories as a starting point:
Internal blogs: Targeted to employees only
External blogs: Focused on the general public, customers, partners, or suppliers
Thematic blogs: Topically linked to a particular event, marketing campaign, or other project
Sponsored blogs: Posted by an employee (or possibly an invited or sponsored guest) that is authorized - but whose content is not necessarily endorsed - by the company
Personal blogs: Individual user blogs residing on one of many hosting services

VITAMEDIAS

Quando refere na sua última edição que as capas da revista "Única" e do "Courrier International" "serão, esta semana", iguais", o Expresso está a referir-se a esta capa e a esta ?
Mas como chegaram a esta ? Fiquei confuso...

VITAMEDIAS

ReCORTES: Os media em discursos directos, diferidos e indeferidos

CULTURAS IN VITRO

14% of Internet users say they no longer download music files

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Physics goes to Hollywood: What do films like Independence Day, Armageddon and X-Men have in common? The answer is that apart from costing millions of dollars to make, they all feature in a new course called Physics in Films that is being taught to students at the University of Central Florida. Costas Efthimiou, the mathematical physicist who teaches the course, believes that non-science students learn more about the fundamentals of physics by studying films and science fiction than they do from more traditional approaches

VITAMEDIAS

Quando é que a Maioria dos portugueses insatisfeitos com o estado da democracia é equivalente a "quase 60 por cento dos inquiridos"?
E quando é que "A maioria dos portugueses acham que o 25 de Abril foi o acontecimento mais importante da história de Portugal", quando isso só é referido por "52 por cento dos inquiridos"?
Não seria mais acertado falar em metade dos portugueses, num inquérito que não revela a margem de erro?

23 abril 2004

ECOPOL


Portugal : Trente ans après
Corrupção: Infelizmente, não me lembro de um único regime, desde o fim do século XVIII, em que a corrupção, essa terrível novidade de hoje, não fosse também um «dado normal». Era um «dado normal» na Monarquia Absoluta, no Liberalismo, na República e na Ditadura. As tabernas da Ribeira, o Marrare do Polimento, o Grémio Literário, os cafés do Rossio e os discretos retiros do Estado Novo estiveram sempre cheios de patriotas com angústia: «Tudo podre, tudo podre!», diziam eles. «Francamente não sei onde isto vai parar.» «Isto» foi andando e foi parar aqui, a 2004, com o futebol «à parte» e o resto exactamente como o futebol. Um país pequeno, íntimo e pobre, com um Estado omnipotente e uma burocracia tropical, segrega corrupção. Se calhar, não funcionava sem corrupção: já alguém pensou nisso? Concordo que nos falta uma grande dose de ética protestante (não católica, por amor de Deus); e polícia e um sistema judicial decente. De qualquer maneira, não acredito que as coisas melhorassem.

TECNOSFERA

Internet speed record set for transmitting data over nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average speed of 6.25 gigabits per second. This is nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The network link used to set the record reaches from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland.

VITAMEDIAS

Morais Sarmento fez "tentativa de pressão" sobre o "Acontece" considerou a Alta Autoridade para a Comunicação Social (AACS)
Assembleia da República aprova fim da AACS: O novo órgão terá um conselho de administração nomeado pela Assembleia da República e será desenhado pelo ministro que tutela a Comunicação Social, Morais Sarmento.

VITAMEDIAS

Dos blogues:
Blogs power the journalism revolution: Blogs are enabling journalists to meet the demand for independent, reliable web-based news
Blogosphere Maturing: Blogs will be a key tool in spreading free speech around the world.
Icosaedro: Um blog não é, nem consegue ser, um espaço de certezas absolutas.
[Dia 1 de Maio: Mais um pó tacho!]

ECOPOL

Pentagon Angered by Military Dead Photos: A Web site published dozens of photographs of American war dead arriving at the nation's largest military mortuary, prompting the Pentagon to order an information clampdown Thursday.
Woman loses her job over coffins photo: A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times.

22 abril 2004

VITAMEDIAS

A devolução: [texto eliminado por ser opinativo em matéria entretanto tratada de forma jornalística]

21 abril 2004

CONTAMINANTES

Ecological Footprint Quiz

CULTURAS IN VITRO

'We Built This City' ranks as the worst record ever:
1. We Built This City - Starship (1985)
2. Achy Breaky Heart - Billy Ray Cyrus (1992)
3. Everybody Have Fun Tonight - Wang Chung (1986)
4. Rollin' - Limpbizkit (2000)
5. Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice (1990)
6. The Heart of Rock & Roll - Huey Lewis & The News (1984)
7. Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin (1988)
8. Party All the Time - Eddie Murphy (1985)
9. American Life - Madonna (2003)
10. Ebony and Ivory - Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder (1982)

CONTAMINANTES

Blog all about it: Weblogs have revolutionised the media. But are they more than just vanity publishing? And if so, what kind of content is best? Leading bloggers Salam Pax, Rhodri Marsden and Gregor Wright debate the issues.

VITAMEDIAS

Journalism professor exposes war media: U.S. and British media have reinforced President George Bush's perspectives in their coverage of weapons of mass destruction, according to a recent study by a university journalism professor.
Assistant professor Susan Moeller's study - released March 9 - found most journalists accepted Bush's terminology and viewpoints on WMD issues, validating the administration's message.
"Most journalists accepted the Bush administration's formulation of the 'War on Terror' as a campaign against WMD, in contrast to coverage during the Clinton era, when many journalists made careful distinctions between acts of terrorism and the acquisition and use of WMD," the study said.

VITAMEDIAS

Military Coffins: The Photos You're Not Supposed to See

ECOPOL

Four moments when 9/11 might have been stopped

CONTAMINANTES

Qual a relação desta Poeira sobre o Novo Modelo de Financiamento do Sistema Científico, Tecnológico e de Inovação e a declaração de que a Ministra da Ciência admite alterar critérios para atrair investigadores?

ECOPOL

Há quem gostasse de o ouvir sobre a sua experiência enquanto blogger.
Por mim, gostava de saber se e como participou nas Seiscentas e vinte e duas votações, qual o comportamento dos outros membros portugueses do Parlamento neste tipo de maratona e porque não há um sítio Web nacional sobre o que fazem os nossos eurodeputados...

VITAMEDIAS

A Sábado que sai na sexta 7 de Maio "tem os melhores exclusivos, os melhores directores, a melhor redacção e a maioria dos melhores colunistas".
É dirigida "às classes alta e média alta" e tem "uma equipa de jornalistas reduzida".

TECNOSFERA


Netscape Desktop Navigator!

TECNOSFERA

Broadband Penetration on the Upswing: 55% of Adult Internet Users Have Broadband at Home or Work

TECNOSFERA

Survey: Denmark is Web-savviest nation: Four Nordic countries are the Web-savviest nations in the world and, together with the United Kingdom, pushed the United States out of the top five
Survey: Denmark Tops E-Commerce Use: Denmark, where personal computers are found in nearly every home, mobile phones in nearly every pocket and people consider going to the bank to pay their bills an outdated if not quaint activity, is the global leader in e-commerce.

TECNOSFERA

Flaw Could Cripple Entire Net: Researchers found a serious security flaw that left core Internet technology vulnerable to hackers, prompting a secretive effort by international governments and industry experts in recent weeks to prevent global disruptions of Web surfing, e-mails and instant messages.
Experts said the flaw, disclosed Tuesday by the British government, affects the underlying technology for nearly all Internet traffic. Left unaddressed, they said, it could allow hackers to knock computers offline and broadly disrupt vital traffic-directing devices, called routers, that coordinate the flow of data among distant groups of computers.

20 abril 2004

ZITE

...

VITAMEDIAS

Journalist reflects on media: Cynicism doesn't always come with experience.
Juan Williams of Washington Post, National Public Radio and Fox News Sunday fame, considers himself more idealistic now than when he first started his career in journalism.
"When you start out as a young journalist, you're more intent on your own ambitions and building your career," Williams said. "And maybe now I'm more set on the idea that a well-informed populous relies on good journalists and good journalism in order to build ... a community. I'm not a cynic. Maybe I'm more idealistic at this point."

VITAMEDIAS

"You have nothing to lose but your jobs" [texto eliminado por ser opinativo em matéria entretanto tratada de forma jornalística]

TECNOSFERA

Read My Mail, Please: The silly privacy fears about Google's e-mail service
you haven't tried it, it sounds creepy. But after a week of testing the prerelease version of Gmail, I'm on the other side of the fence. Gmail isn't an invasion of privacy, and its ads are preferable to the giant blinking banners for diets and dating services that are splashed across my other Web mail accounts. [...]
The Google guys need to implement [a "No Trespassing" marker] before the backlash gets out of hand. Otherwise, they may be forced to abandon the best Web mail system yet because of a few well-placed people who've never even tried it. That really would be evil.

TECNOSFERA

Tcham! Está finalmente acessível a biblioteca do conhecimento online!
Como alguém me disse - e espero comentários sobre o assunto - demorou 12 anos para ter uma coisa destas em Portugal.
Doze anos? Porquê a admiração: não é a velocidade do país quando está empenhado? (Piada cínica)
Depois de a ter experimentado, vale a pena mesmo para quem não tem acesso nas universidades: pesquisa o assunto que lhe interessa e depois só tem de ir a a uma biblioteca pedir a publicação.
Não é mau e podia ser pior: lembrem-se de como o faziam em 1992 - mas lutem para ter um melhor modelo em 2016!

ECOPOL

Tenho uma sincera pena que o Barnabé tenha optado por uma ironia sem substância sobre a entrevista a Omar Bakri Mohammed, líder do "londonistão" e teórico da Al-Qaeda na Europa (recomendo esta leitura, claro).
Ao ler aquilo, pensei que qualquer pessoa se sentia desprovida de argumentos perante pessoas que assim pensam - e é triste num assunto destes, para um ocidental como eu. Triste fiquei mas o Barnabé demonstrou ter algum humor, pelo autor dos textos que pensa equiparar-se aos Monty Python e afinal é tão fechado (nesta questão, pelo menos) quanto Omar Bakri Mohammed.
Neste assunto, estamos muito bem servidos :-(

TECNOSFERA

In a Fast-Moving Web World, Some Prefer the Dial-Up Lane: A majority of Americans who surf the Internet still do so by dialing in on regular telephone lines, despite the rapidly narrowing price gap between high-speed and dial-up connections.

.DE!

o incomodado

16 abril 2004

ZITES

Earth Impact Effects Program
Princeton 3D Model Search Engine

VITAMEDIAS

Newspapers' reputations rest with editors: reporters don't make a newspaper good or bad. A newspaper's reputation rests with those who push the levers and make decisions regarding content - the editors.
Editors hire and fire. They control the budget. They decide what news to play up or down or bury or ignore. Editors decide whether to fill their pages with touchy-feely stuff or the hard stuff that causes the political bosses to have sleepless nights.

VITAMEDIAS

Will Fowler, 81; Colorful Reporter in the Golden Age of L.A. Newspapers: On Wednesday, his daughter, Jenny Gene Fowler Adler, faxed The Times a succinct, two-page obituary that her father had written five years ago.
"He was very prepared," she said. "That's what happens when you're a writer — you write your own obituary."

TECNOSFERA

Harvesting info from another site did not infringe: A US judge has ruled that when a yacht seller used software to harvest information on sales from a rival's site, it did not infringe copyright. The seller had already won a defamation case after allegations of web site trespass.

TECNOSFERA

Driver gets 18 months in jail for speeding that killed man: Black box crucial. Recorder showed no attempt to brake
The recording device, which stores data on how a car is driven in the last five seconds before a collision, showed four seconds before impact, Gauthier had the gas pedal to the floor. He didn't brake before impact.

ECOPOL

Ministra da Justiça admite alargar gestão partilhada de cadeias às empresas: Celeste Cardona, prefere "falar em partilha de responsabilidades" com "instituições privadas de solidariedade social" mas não repudia a expressão "primeiro passo para a privatização" e admite a hipótese de alargar a cooperação a empresas
Porque não se deve privatizar as prisões? A ler:
A Tale of Two Systems: Cost, Quality, and Accountability in Private Prisons
Private Prisons: Profits of Crime
Private Jails: Prisons for Fun and Profit
Penal Profits? FAQ explains privatized prisons and the controversy surrounding them
Citizens Against Private Prisons
Prison Privatisation Report International
Privitization Watch

SEI LÁ!!

Li este aviso e pareceu-me bem. Depois (re)li sobre a censura e os blogues e fico com dúvidas sobre esta "grande confusão":

1) "Apagar um comentário seja por que razão for NÃO É UM ACTO DE CENSURA".
Pelo contrário, e exceptuando aqueles que definem normas claras como o Barnabé, acho que em geral apagar um comentário É UM ACTO DE CENSURA.

2) "Um blogue não é um Orgão de Comunicação Social (OCS). Apesar de algumas semelhanças, não se lhe pode dar esse estatuto."
O problema é que algumas dessas semelhanças configuram os blogues como OCS, nomeadamente em casos como a difamação...

3) "Aliás, os blogues não carecem de um estatuto, nunca serão equiparados a OCS."
"Nunca"? Veja-se, por exemplo, o que diz a convenção sobre o cibercrime do Conselho da Europa ou as novas leis europeias sobre o "copyright"...

4) "Quanto muito carecem de um conjunto de normas, um "livro de ética" que permita futuramente distinguir os vários tipos de blogues e evitar a confusão e as generalizações."
Blogue é blogue, como jornal é jornal e televisão é televisão. Cada um pode ter o tal "livro de ética" mas regem-se sempre pela lei geral - e essa evita precisamente "a confusão e as generalizações" para levar a tribunal quando fôr preciso...

5) "Os autores dos blogues são inteiramente livres de apagar ou não os comentários dos leitores. Cada autor decidirá as suas regras e é conveniente que as explique aos leitores, claro, isto se previlegiam a transparência na comunicação".
ver 1)

6) "O(s) autor(es) de um blogue são soberanos no seu espaço. Esse espaço, embora seja publicado, partilhado em público, é um espaço privado. E na minha casa quem faz as regras sou eu. Chamem-me mal-educado ou mau carácter se uma dessas regras for a proibição de, por exemplo, dizer palavrões. Mas não me podem chamar censor: mesmo que eu abra as portas ao povo continua a ser a MINHA casa".
Não, está errado. A casa é privada, é onde se dizem os palavrões e os carinhos, onde se é soberano. Quando se escreve em público, como num blogue, passa a ser uma casa pública.
É como o dono de um bar que dá uma festa privada para 500 pessoas e manda umas patacoadas políticas. Tudo bem (desde que não esteja um jornalista a ouvir...).
Outra coisa é usar esse bar para um comício com 500 pessoas e se declara em público ofensas a terceiros. Continua a ser uma casa privada mas foi aberta ao público. Basta uma queixa e é crime - e é isso que muitos autores de blogues parecem não querer entender...


7) "As virgens ofendidas que vão para... [...], estão a confundir merda com pó de talco".
Talvez mas eu evitava pisar o pó de talco nestas questões :))

15 abril 2004

ECOPOL

Ten Most Wanted Documents for 2004:
1. The 28 Pages: Secret Pages of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 Intelligence Failures
2. Type of crime investigated each time a Patriot Act power was invoked
3. A list of the contaminants found in the sources of our drinking water
4. A number of court cases partially or totally closed to the public and an explanation why for each
5. Industry-written reports on chemical plants' risks to communities
6. Identities of those detained after 9/11 on immigration charges or as material witnesses
7. Gifts from lobbyists to Senators and their staff
8. Federal contracts, grants and other agreements, their total value (in dollars), records documenting violations, and fines and other federal enforcement actions
9. All changes made to publicly available versions of congressional legislation before a committee vote
10. Congressional Research Service Reports

VITAMEDIAS

Vai uma conversa engraçada... [texto eliminado por ser opinativo em matéria entretanto tratada de forma jornalística]

VITAMEDIAS

Blogs: Here to stay - with changes [simples ponto da situação sobre os blogues]

TECNOSFERA

Dos motores de busca:
Dan Gillmor anuncia o novo motor de busca A9 da (tcham!! tcham!!) Amazon. Tem funcionalidades interessantes, como "open book results" e "open search history" (obrigam a registo na Amazon - mais uma batalha na privacidade individual?...) ou um "site info" para cada link fornecido. Os resultados são fornecidos pelo Google, que anunciou publicidade por cidade.
Por cá, o Jornalismo e Comunicação revelou o RepositóriUM – Repositório Institucional da Universidade do Minho.

14 abril 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Who can repair journalism's image? The past year has been the most miserable in the history of modern American journalism. [...]
"My impression from my contact with readers both in person and via e-mail and telephone suggests to me that we always start behind the eight ball anyway," says Mr. Wycliff of The Chicago Tribune. "People suspect that we've got an ax to grind, we've got an agenda, we are unrelievedly liberal or relentlessly conservative."
"They don't believe from the beginning that we're playing square," he says.
Ultimately, some of those who monitor the media suggest, detecting lies may prove a less challenging task than changing perceptions.
Public's cynicism about media has become a pressing concern: At a time when public distrust of the news media appears to be at a dangerously high level, there is evidence of a deep and fundamental disagreement between those who produce news and those who consume it.
Although most journalists believe quality and values are vital elements of their work and see themselves as providing an important civic function, the reading and viewing public seems to think of journalism as a bottom-line-driven enterprise populated by the ethically challenged. [...]
Jay Rosen, chairman of the Journalism Department at New York University, says the media have failed to inform the public about their own evolving role.
The increasingly intrusive presence of the journalist in the story itself -- thanks in part to the proliferation of analysis and commentary in recent years -- has raised public concerns that have not been adequately addressed, Rosen says. "The journalist looms larger in the news. . . . It creates suspicions; it creates questions," he says. "The press became a player but never bothered to say what it was playing for."

ECOPOL

Iraq Blog Count

VITAMEDIAS

Company Blogs Aim for Newspaper End Run: Channel 9 is a new blog, or online diary, run by Microsoft programmers. Launched April 1, it features interviews with Microsoft employees, "insider" information on new products and breaking news from the software giant.
While Microsoft says the site is about "building community," it also serves another purpose - getting the company's point of view out without relying on the media.
Business Discovers the Blogosphere: what do blogs actually offer individuals and corporations? Why are they so popular?

TECNOSFERA

Security Firm Warns of Spam That Spies: Up to 50 percent of all spam released in the last year is bugged with so-called spam beacons that send a coded message back to the spammer whenever a spam message is opened, says MX Logic of Denver. Such tracking helps spammers refine their distribution lists and weed out bad e-mail addresses from good ones.

VITAMEDIAS

[À atenção do Inimigo Público, no Público, e mais uma razão para evitar os plágios:] Onion Taken Seriously, Film at 11: The article in the Beijing Evening News told a shocking story of American hubris: Congress was behaving like a petulant baseball team and threatening to bolt Washington, D.C., unless it got a new, modern Capitol building, complete with retractable roof.
There was a problem with the story. Rather than do his own original reporting, Evening News writer Huang Ke had cribbed, nearly word for word, his text from an American publication. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Ke hadn't bothered to vet the source he had plagiarized: The Onion.

TECNOSFERA

Man pays one million dollars online for lucky mobile phone number: A deal for the number 135 8585 8585, which has a similar pronunciation in Chinese to 'let me be rich, be rich, be rich, be rich,' was completed this week after an exchange of some 70 bids

CONTAMINANTES

FDA Approves Human Brain Implant Devices: human trials are set to begin on a brain-computer interface involving implants.
Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients.

ECOPOL

Abril É Revolução ou T'inta Anos Depois, Capitalizemos o R.: gRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...

CULTURAS IN VITRO

A codificação do gosto humano e a criação musical automática: o que acontecerá quando os computadores souberem estimar os nossos gostos musicais?

ECOPOL

Já repararam que esta Carta da "Al-Qaeda" a uma cidadã da Europa vencida, em resposta à Carta à Al-Qaeda de uma cidadã da Europa vencida (não identificada "online" mas de Helena Matos) - e que originou hoje esta Resposta a Uma Suposta Carta da "Al-Qaeda" - onde o autor revela "o choque sincero de ver nas páginas do PÚBLICO, um jornal que por razões que me dispenso de enumerar muito prezo, a apologia descabelada dos mitos anti-semitas mais boçais" - provém do mesmo autor que levou a Direcção Editorial do Público em Agosto de 2003, a pedir desculpa aos seus leitores no texto "O PÚBLICO e a Discussão Sobre o Holocausto" (link indisponível), onde se refere que o jornal "cometeu um erro em ter editado os textos em causa, sobretudo porque o fez sem alertar os seus leitores para o carácter revisionista dos mesmos." E que, "Na verdade, os dois textos em causa, e em especial o segundo, assumiam posições que acolhemos nas nossas páginas em nome do pluralismo e da abertura de espírito, mas que iam para além do que o bom senso e o bom gosto recomendavam".
E que o referido autor não é de agora que escreve em jornais este tipo de pensamento, como se vê nestas Notas sobre a questão judaica, alegadamente publicadas no Jornal de Notícias de 31/08/97 e 01/09/97?

13 abril 2004

TECNOSFERA

GoogleMania:
The Secret Source of Google's Power: While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.
This computer is running the world's top search engine, a social networking service, a shopping price comparison engine, a new email service, and a local search/yellow pages engine. What will they do next with the world's biggest computer and most advanced operating system?
Is Google the future of e-mail? Google is hoping to convince us to use its forthcoming Gmail service for our lifetime e-mail needs.
[W]ould-be users of Gmail or any similar service should recognize that their so-called free e-mail comes at a price.
Three replies defending Google from the pro-regulatory privacy crowd
Google Says It Doesn't Plan to Change Search Results despite complaints that the first listing on a search for the word "Jew" directs people to an anti-Semitic Web site.
Google Adsense Test Page: If you want to know what kind of ads will be displayed on your website

ZITE

The Writings on the Stall, an online repository of writings found on restroom walls.

ECOPOL

The Failure: be serious and complete, investigations now underway, and additional efforts undertaken by historians later, should explore the following questions:
1. The close cooperation between American and British intelligence services which helped President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair make their case for war while protecting them from awkward questions. [...]
2. Communications with the CIA by officials in the Pentagon, the office of the vice-president, and the National Security Council that might have been intended, or reasonably interpreted, as pressure to skew intelligence estimates. [...]
3. The origin of the obsession with Iraq which the Bush administration brought into office in January 2001, an obsession well-documented [...]
Attempts to answer these questions will be resisted by the White House principally on the grounds of executive privilege, and by the CIA citing its historic understanding with British intelligence that neither will share information received from the other without its prior agreement, which the British may confidently be expected to refuse. [...]
But something went terribly wrong as America debated the need for war a year ago, and each of the possible explanations raises grave questions of trust—either the CIA cannot be trusted to see the difference between real and imaginary dangers, or the agency made itself pliant and supine in the hands of the President, who exploited the CIA to make his case for war.

VITAMEDIAS

7 reasons Web users will pay:
Here's a look from bCentral at seven types of content that analysts believe will inspire people to pay:
• Content that helps people do their jobs.
• Content that helps people manage their money.
• Content that helps people manage their appearance and love life.
• Content with a deep emotional connection to people's lives.
• Paid programming or features "bundled" or added on to free content.
• Content that optimizes the Web as a medium.
• Content for recreation and entertainment.
Considering a paid-subscription model for your Web site? Here's some more advice from the experts:
• Don't charge unless you have exclusivity and/or a strong market share.
• Experiment with pricing.
• Experiment with "bundling" tools and other programming.
• Optimize for the Web and plan ahead for the impact of broadband.
• Don't make signing up a hassle.
• Consider multilingual offerings, to draw customers internationally.
• Know that advertising will remain the dominant revenue source.

VITAMEDIAS

(o vento lá fora) fala Sobre a censura e outras histórias nos media: "Há censura. Não vi nunca, nas várias Redacções que frequentei, regras escritas ou orais sobre isso. Mas não é necessário. Façam o seguinte exercício. Vejam as sondagens dos últimos seis meses antes de cada eleição. Vejam depois os resultados finais. Os resultados das coligações em que o PCP entra são por regra superiores aos atribuídos pelas sondagens, A inversa é verdadeira para o CDS-PP.
Segundo exercício: comparem o número de notícias sobre o PCP ou cuja fonte seja o PCP ou próxima com o número de notícias de qualquer outro partido com representação parlamentar. Verão que é muito, mas muito menor."
E, no entanto, a Comissão Nacional de Eleições garante nas suas Regras Comuns que "e) os órgãos de comunicação social [OCS] estão vinculados a um dever de tratamento jornalístico não discriminatório".
Ou o Paulo está enganado ou a CNE não consegue vincular os OCS...

ZITE

Subservient Chicken

ECOPOL

Portugal visto de fora:
Portugal fears competition from new EU entrants in the race for inward investment and export markets when the European Union expands eastwards in May.
Bush should heed Portugal on abortion: To understand what might happen in America if President Bush gets his way with the Supreme Court, consider recent events in Portugal.
[e mais esta "off topic": Pan in Portugal: Richard Zimler made his name a few years ago with The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, an original and compelling story of early Portuguese Jewry, which became a bestseller. Now comes Hunting Midnight, another novel in his "Sephardic Cycle", exploring the heritage and experience of Portuguese Jews.]

VITAMEDIAS

Sony Aims to Amaze With Its Wireless TV: With Location Free, Sony is aiming to change the way people watch television.
Taking advantage of the same wireless technology that allows laptop computer users to log on to the Internet over the air, Location Free is designed to make couch potatoes more mobile. After connecting a base station to a dedicated cable or satellite TV feed, you can carry the 5-pound, flat-panel liquid crystal display around the house or into the yard without losing the signal.

CONTAMINANTES

o Governo, no seu afã de "diminuir a sinistralidade" nas estradas, resolveu multiplicar por cinco as multas por condução sob efeito do álcool (acho bem, se acompanhado de outras medidas), e por três a condução por excesso de velocidade. Sucede que, há tempos atrás, foi divulgado um estudo de uma investigadora de uma universidade portuguesa, logo seguido de um estudo de uma mais ampla comissão de peritos ingleses, sob a principal causa de sinistralidade nas estradas. E qual era ela, em ambos os estudos? O excesso de velocidade, como nos repetem "ad nauseam" as nossas autoridades rodoviárias? O álcool? A má condução? As manobras perigosas? Não, nada disso: a principal causa de acidentes é o sono ao volante.
[Publicidade:] New Study on Drowsy Driving Has Eye-Opening Results: Drowsiness accounts for more than 1,500 auto-related deaths per year in the U.S., according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. To prevent this deadly problem, Ford Motor Company has announced findings from a comprehensive five-month study, resulting in new technology designed to keep drowsy drivers awake.

12 abril 2004

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Global music sales fall by 7.6% in 2003 – some positive signs in 2004
Music Sales Strong Despite Digital Piracy: Online file-sharing and other digital piracy persist, but a gradual turnaround in U.S. music sales that began last fall picked up in the first quarter of this year, resulting in the industry's best domestic sales in years. [...]
Industry observers said no single factor has driven the turnaround.
Venda de música gravada continuou em queda durante 2003: A espantosa excepção à regra chegou de terras norte-americanas, onde o ano de 2003 assinalou uma inesperada inversão do rumo, com resultados de recuperação já confirmados. A política de redução do preço dos álbuns em CD posta em prática no mercado americano no último ano terá contribuido para parte destes resultados.

VITAMEDIAS

See Me, Blog Me: get ready for Web video journals
While millions of text-driven blogs have blossomed worldwide, there are only a couple hundred video blogs out there.

VITAMEDIAS

Illustrating the new journalism model: The first illustration is today's typical media entity, courtesy of Walter Lippmann's (the father of modern journalism) core beliefs that an educated elite are necessary to lead the masses through the manufacture of consent. [...]
The second illustration represents a Postmodern media outlet.

VITAMEDIAS

Pulitzer Prizes Show Strength of Big Journalism: It's nearly inconceivable that a blogger or even a group of bloggers, lacking the resources of a major news organization (including First Amendment lawyers), would have produced any of these projects.

TECNOSFERA

Photographs and Memories: The cameraphone represents the latest step in a long evolution away from elevating and preserving moments, to capturing and disposing of them.
Our evolution from digital cameras to camera phones, as underscored last week by Sony Ericsson president Katsumi Ihara's admission that Sony has already ceded the low-end digital camera market to camera phones, marks just the latest in a series of steps that threaten not only the photography industry, but the way in which we relate to images, the memories they evoke, and perhaps even history itself.

VITAMEDIAS

The Ten Worst Greenwashers of 2003: Greenwashers are the adversaries of environmentally responsible consumers. Through marketing and public relations, greenwashers fool the public into mistaking hollow claims for genuine environmental commitment:
The ten worst greenwashers of 2003 are:
- Project Learning Tree : for teaching tens of millions of schoolchildren worldwide, "We cannot depend on nature alone to take care of our forests," and other lessons from the environmental education curriculum controlled by the American Forest Foundation, a logging trade group
- Avalon Natural Products : for labeling a range of personal care products as "Certified Organic", though they contain chemicals and synthetic preservatives and are composed primarily of water
- Starbucks : for failing to adhere to its Environmental Mission Statement by slipping from industry leader to laggard on Fair Trade, and for adopting a patchwork approach to sustainability through its "Commitment to Origins" line of coffees
- Royal Caribbean International : for using a variety of means, including advertisements, a self-issued environmental award and an open letter from the CEO, to shield customers from information about raw sewage dumping and other forms of cruise ship pollution
- Environmental Protection Agency : for its unprecedented and allegedly illegal use of taxpayer funds to purchase advertisements for the Clear Skies Act, which were targeted at urban communities with high rates of asthma
- BP : for suggesting in its "On the Street" marketing campaign that the oil company is satisfying consumers' environmental concerns, while its continued support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is at odds with public opinion
- American Chemistry Council : for planning a covert public relations campaign funded by 3M, BASF, Dow, Dupont and other members of the chemical trade group, in order to undermine support for the precautionary principle among Californians worried about their body burden of industrial chemicals
- Salmon of the Americas , for hiring third-party experts and setting up front web-sites, such as pcbsinsalmon.com, to misinform the media and the public about toxic chemicals in Heritage, Majestic and other brands of farmed salmon
- Subaru : for reclassifying the Outback from a car to a light truck, thus skirting fuel economy standards and violating the distinction in its marketing campaign between Outbacks and SUVs
- Monsanto : for donating $2 million to a well-known conservation organization in order to mask the negative environmental impact of herbicides which earn the company more than $1 billion each year, and for sponsoring "Look Closer at Biotechnology", an activity book published by the biotech industry for 3 rd and 4 th graders

VITAMEDIAS

Eles andam aí: Marketers Press for Product Placement in Magazine Text: Call for End of Strict Separation Between Advertising and Editorial Content
"More advertisers ask us to blur the lines between advertising and editorial," said Nina Lawrence, president of Conde Nast's Bridal Group and publisher of Bride's and Modern Bride. "It's accelerated in the last year." Ms. Lawrence placed the blame for this squarely on branded-entertainment deals: "Advertisers are asking for what they want on TV, and they're getting it."

07 abril 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Putting 40,000 Readers, One by One, on a Cover: When the 40,000 subscribers to Reason, the monthly libertarian magazine, receive a copy of the June issue, they will see on the cover a satellite photo of a neighborhood - their own neighborhood. And their house will be graphically circled.
On one level, the project, sort of the ultimate in customized publishing, is unsurprising: of course a magazine knows where its subscribers live. But it is still a remarkable demonstration of the growing number of ways databases can be harnessed. Apart from the cover image, several advertisements are customized to reflect the recipient's particulars. [...]
"What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?"

06 abril 2004

CONTAMINANTES

Lista de sítios Web com variados temas espaciais:
Les petits habitants du système solaire sur l’Internet fourmille d’informations sur les comètes, astéroïdes et les missions spatiales passées et futures. La liste qui suit est loin d’être exhaustive et est un simple tremplin pour une exploration plus fouillée de la toile:
• Le Minor Planet Center est responsable de la collecte, du calcul, du suivi et de la diffusion d’observations astrométriques et des informations orbitales concernant astéroïdes et comètes.
Near Earth Object (NEO).
Liste alphabétique des noms des astéroïdes.
Liste des astéroïdes éventuellement dangereux (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids), susceptibles de se rapprocher de la Terre.
A propos de la comète LINEAR (C/1999 S4) qui a explosé en 2000.
Les distances les plus courtes entre les comètes et la Terre.
• Page d’accueil du programme Deep Impact.
• Consacré au programme Discovery de la NASA, assorti de renvois vers des projets comme NEAR, Stardust, Contour, Deep Impact et Dawn.
• A propos de l’étude radar d’astéroïdes.
• Page du Ames Research Center de la NASA sur les dangers des impacts de comètes et astéroïdes.
Liste, avec des liens à propos d’astéroïdes.
• Sur la mission NEAR à destination de l’astéroïde Eros.
Near Earth Asteroid Tracking, coopération entre la NASA et l’armée de l’air américaine pour déceler des astéroïdes et comètes menaçant la Terre.
• Le programme Near-Earth Object de la NASA.
Liste d’astéroïdes, détectés par le système Sentry, susceptibles de s’écraser sur Terre.
A propos du système NEODyS fournissant des informations sur les Near Earth Asteroids.
• A propos de la mission Deep Space 1.
• A propos d’ISEE 3, rebaptisé ensuite International Cometary Explorer (ICE).
• A propos de la sonde japonaise Sakigake envoyée vers la comète de Halley.
• A propos de la sonde japonaise Suisei envoyée vers la comète de Halley.
• Nombreux liens vers des informations sur les astéroïdes et comètes.
• A propos d’une sonde à destination de Pluton et de la ceinture de Kuiper.
• Informations générales sur le programme scientifique de l’ESA.
• Page d’accueil de la mission GAIA de l’ESA.
• A propos du succès de la sonde Giotto de l’ESA vers la comète de Halley.
• Site de l’ESA sur la sonde Rosetta, réunissant des informations sur la mission, les expériences scientifiques, les ressources, comètes et astéroïdes.
Simulation de l’impact d’un astéroïde pour la côte de New York.
• Le programme Spacewatch.
La ‘météo’ de l’espace avec une liste des survols rapprochés d’astéroïdes au large de la Terre.
• A propos de la mission européenne Giotto vers la comète de Halley.
Les grandes comètes de l’histoire.
• Page d’accueil du projet Stardust.
Dernières nouvelles à propos des comètes.
• A propos des comètes sungrazer.
• A propos du groupe de sungrazers de Kreutz.
La loi de Bode et la découverte de l’astéroïde Cérès.
L’Asteroid Research Node européen, association informelle de groupes européens se livrant à des études sur les astéroïdes.
• A propos du Barringer Meteor Crater en Arizona.
• A propos de la mission Comet Nucleus Tour (Contour). Contient une foule d’informations sur les comètes.
• Liens avec des informations sur les comètes.
• Page d’accueil de l’International Astronomical Union (IAU)
• A propos des sondes russes Vega 1 et Vega 2 à destination de la comète de Halley.
Le programme LINEAR.
• Le Near Earth Object Information Centre au Royaume-Uni. Comprend une liste de passages rapprochés d’astéroïdes au large de la Terre et une liste d’impacts ayant provoqué d’importants dégâts sur Terre.
• A propos des différents types et groupes d’astéroïdes.
• Info avec de nombreux liens sur les astéroïdes.
• A propos de la collision entre la comète Shoemaker-Levy 9 et Jupiter en 1994.
• Courte introduction sur les astéroïdes et liens intéressants.
• Informations sur l’astéroïde Vesta.
• A propos de la ceinture d’astéroïdes entre Mars et Jupiter.
• A propos de la ceinture de Kuiper et de Pluton.
• A propos des activités commerciales de l’entreprise SpaceDev, qui a conçu la mission deep space NEAP.
Spaceguard UK au Royaume-Uni est l’observatoire national chargé de détecter les éventuelles collisions d’astéroïdes et de comètes avec la Terre. Grâce à des capitaux privés, il a récemment créé le Spaceguard Centre, dans l’ancien Powys Observatory.
• De nombreuses informations sur les Near Earth Objects (NEO).
• Page d’accueil du programme Deep Impact.
• Description de la mission américaine Dawn à destination des astéroïdes Cérès et Vesta.
• A propos de l’explosion de Toungouska et de la chute de corps célestes sur Terre. Ce n’est que l’une des innombrables pages consacrées à cet événement.
Earth Impact Data Base du Geological Survey of Canada. Comprend une liste et des images d’archive de cratères terrestres.

VITAMEDIAS

US papers pay the price for confusing fact and fiction: The newsroom celebrations for [last] afternoon's Pulitzer Prize announcement will mark the end of a fraught year for the US newspaper industry, as publications large and small have struggled with questions of credibility and heightened mistrust. [...]
Instances of plagiarism and fabrication have been reported from Connecticut to Chicago, from Washington to Georgia. Most recently, USA Today, the nation's biggest paper, said it had strong evidence that Jack Kelley, a former foreign correspondent, had faked parts of at least eight big stories, including one that made him a Pulitzer finalist in 2002.

VITAMEDIAS

Destimulating the Journalism Laser: The laser metaphor has much more explanatory power. An echo chamber echos everything. A laser only significantly amplifies photons that are going in the correct direction. The news media only amplifies certain stories.
The reason I believe this metaphor is superior is that it gives us the opportunity to discuss the "excitation level" of Big Journalism. If you take a laser and just lightly stimulate it, it won't actually form a coherent beam because the light is escaping too quickly to become involved in a standing wave inside the resonance chamber. As you stimulate it more, eventually you cross the point where the coherent beam develops, and then more stimulation only brightens the beam until it eventually melts the components themselves.
As I hope is obvious, the "photons" are stories, and the "atoms" are people or companies participating in the journalistic process. Just like photons in the laser, atoms are randomly emitting photons all the time, little stories that attract little or no attention and die without ever being echoed or amplified, because they aren't in line with what can be sustained.
Of course the metaphor isn't perfect.

TECNOSFERA


GoogleMail

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Humanoid robot conducts Beethoven symphony: The 58-centimetre-tall humanoid robot led the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in a unique rendition of Beethoven's 5th symphony during a concert held at the Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Tokyo on 15 March.

TECNOSFERA

En projet : la Charte d'éthique et de civilité commune aux usagers de l’Internet:
ARTICLE Ier
Tous les individus, sans discrimination, peuvent se prévaloir de l’ensemble des dispositions proclamées dans la présente Charte.
ARTICLE 2
L’accès au numérique est un droit fondamental, universel et intangible.
ARTICLE 3
Tout Homme a le droit de se protéger contre le numérique, sous réserve des dispositions prévues par la Loi.
ARTICLE 4
Les usagers du numérique, doivent, en toutes circonstances, respecter l’identité, la liberté d’expression et le droit à la vie privée de tout individu.
ARTICLE 5
Le libre accès depuis tout lieu au numérique et le principe de l’anonymat doivent être partout reconnus et respectés.
ARTICLE 6
Le numérique ne doit pas être un vecteur de discrimination, d’incitation à la haine, ou d’actes attentatoires à l’intégrité et à la dignité de la personne humaine.
ARTICLE 7
Le numérique est au service des principes de solidarité entre les individus et d’entraide entre les peuples.
(la France le présentera au Sommet Mondial de la Société de l’Information – phase 2 – en novembre 2005)

TECNOSFERA

Blogging is Booming And so is the potential for smart marketers who embrace this high-traffic phenomenon.
The New Family Album: More parents are using online blogs to share photos, memories, gripes and advice with friends — and strangers

CONTAMINANTES

In Math, Computers Don't Lie. Or Do They? A leading mathematics journal has finally accepted that one of the longest-standing problems in the field — the most efficient way to pack oranges — has been conclusively solved.
That is, if you believe a computer. [...]
Because of the ambiguities, the journal, the prestigious Annals of Mathematics, has decided to publish only the theoretical parts of the proof, which have been checked in the traditional manner. A more specialized journal, Discrete and Computational Geometry, will publish the computer sections.

05 abril 2004

CULTURAS IN VITRO

King Kong tops movie monster poll: Giant ape King Kong, who ran amok through Manhattan, has been voted the most terrifying movie monster of all time by film experts.
MOVIE MONSTERS TOP TEN
1. King Kong - King Kong (1933)
2. Talos - Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
3. The Alien - Alien (1979)
4. The T-Rex - Jurassic Park (1993)
5. The Thing - The Thing (1982)
6. Shelob - Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
7. The Metaluna Mutant - This Island Earth (1955)
8: Tetsuo - Akira (1988)
9. The Skinned Werewolf - The Company of Wolves (1984)
10. The Troll - Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (2001)
Source: Empire Magazine

ZITE

futureme.org: create an e-mail to send to the future

TECNOSFERA

Info Aggregator is an RSS-to-IMAP service. It lets you receive and read RSS feeds in your favourite mail client. It delivers all the latest news and blog posts directly to your mailbox.

TECNOSFERA

O número de assinantes do serviço telefónico móvel chegou aos 9,34 milhões no final do ano passado

VITAMEDIAS

New Online Advertising Model Riles Journalista: IntelliTXT Links Commercial Messages to Individual Words of Editorial Content
"It's like selling product placement in the middle of articles," said Kelly McBride, member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, a St. Petersburg, Fla., journalism think tank, of IntelliTXT. "I have a huge problem with that."

VITAMEDIAS

New Service Provides Ratings for TV Shows Via Internet: TV viewers frustrated when their favorite programs are cancelled due to poor ratings will now have the opportunity to directly vote for shows while the show is still on the air. ITvRatings.com will supply immediate feedback from viewers to TV networks, which can be used to gauge the popularity of a program.

TECNOSFERA

Secret hackers to aid war on internet fraud: Fears that small online retailers are the weakest link in the fight against internet fraud have prompted MasterCard, the global payment scheme group, to set up secret teams of hackers to test security systems in the sector.

02 abril 2004

.DE!

Bush Speaks, Boy Yawns, Letterman And CNN Get Things Confused (ver vídeo)

.DE!

Will drinking 100 cups of coffee in 24 hours kill a person?

CONTAMINANTES

Europe needs more scientists: EU blueprint for action: “Far from reaching the Lisbon objectives in terms of the numbers of scientists needed, Europe risks a crisis with the number of its scientists sharply decreasing” says Prof. José Mariano Gago, Chairman of the Group. As far as the number of science professionals needed to reach the Barcelona goal is concerned, the Group found that the current annual European growth rate of 2.1% is insufficient to catch-up to similar levels of scientists employed in other regions of the world. Although some countries are making progress, Europe’s biggest countries are struggling to meet their commitments in terms of their overall population.

TECNOSFERA

Free E-Mail With a Steep Price? Google's plan to offer free Web-based e-mail has raised worries among privacy advocates that the service could make it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance of its users.
[Repare-se no pormenor de ser um servidor seguro de email...]

VITAMEDIAS

Portal do Governo: o Governo está empenhado no lançamento de uma nova entidade reguladora, talvez uma das peças mais decisivas neste processo, que agregará competências dispersas e que garantirá um exercício de prevenção e fiscalização claro e eficaz em todo o sector dos "media".
[Prevenção dos media?... Importam-se de clarificar o conceito?]

01 abril 2004

VITAMEDIAS

10 funniest media jokes on April Fools day:
- Switzerland celebrates unbelievable pasta harvest
- Big Ben will be electronic
- Tattoo in exchange for a lifetime discount
- American State of Alabama will soon change the Pi number
- Help the poor-buy them weapons
- Lenin's body will be exhibited in Disneyland in Paris
- April 1 was created by the Byzantine emperor Konstantin
- Diego Maradona will play for Moscow's "Spartak"
- Russia will soon manufacture hand grenades incrusted with diamonds
- Eiffel tower to be dismantled

VITAMEDIAS

The Spinelessness of US Journalism: It happened as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was beginning a press conference in Baghdad during his brief visit to Iraq.
As he started to speak, all of the Iraqi and other Arab journalists in the hall got up and walked out, along with many reporters and camera crews from European and other countries.
About the only journalists remaining in their seats when the protest ended were the Americans, who on television could be seen shuffling in embarrassment in their seats.
The cause of the protest was the killing, only a few hours before, of two Dubai journalists from Al Arabiya by U.S. troops, who "took out" their car as they were driving past a military checkpoint. [...]
the truth is that some 36 journalists have been killed in the course of covering this war, including a number who were directly and deliberately targeted by U.S. guns and bombs.

ZITE

This Is Broken: A new project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it.

CONTAMINANTES

Wash Those Hands! Nearly 10% of Americans who are admitted to a hospital pick up an infection while they are there. Sometimes the culprit is a germ that they've brought with them to the hospital — typically some bacteria on the skin that follow the path of a needle or catheter into the body. But most hospital infections are transmitted from one patient to another by doctors, nurses and other health-care workers. No, doctors and nurses aren't carrying around vials of disease-causing bugs and cracking them open at bedside. Often the germs are hitching a ride on the hands of hospital workers.

CONTAMINANTES

Dogs do resemble their owners, finds study

ECOPOL

EU to require passenger data from airlines under an agreement reached yesterday by EU justice and interior ministers.
The agreement highlights the turnround in the attitude of EU governments towards intelligence data-gathering following this month's bombings in Madrid.
Britain forces through demand to retain EU airline passenger data: France and Germany last night bowed to a British demand that EU governments automatically retain data on airline passenger records to help fight illegal immigration and investigate terrorist networks.
Files & Biometric Identifiers on More Than a Billion Passengers to be Computerised and Shared Globally by 2015
El Metro de Londres tendrá cámaras que analizarán 'conductas sospechosas': Los pasajeros del Metro de Londres, el más antiguo y uno de los más extensos del mundo, serán vigilados por más de 6.000 cámaras 'inteligentes'. Estos 'ojos electrónicos' serán capaces de detectar comportamientos sospechosos y potencialmente terroristas, según el fabricante Ipsoteck.
Así, el 95% de las estaciones del famoso 'Tube' londinense estará permanentemente vigilado por dispositivos de alta tecnología [...]

TECNOSFERA

Amazing Video of Dancing Humanoids (via blogdex)

CONTAMINANTES

O custo de seis milhões de dólares de uma vida humana nos Estados Unidos está muito longe dos 438 euros em Portugal. São "oitenta e sete mil oitocentos e onze escudos" em moeda antiga...