ZITE

Drawing from Life: Caricatures and Cartoons from the American Art/Portrait Gallery Collection

ZITE

Les autos de Tintin: Version Hergé et photo de la voiture correspondante

CONTAMINANTES

EU launches effort to cut road deaths: A person was nearly 15 times more likely to die in an automobile accident than in a commercial airliner for each kilometre travelled, the 2001 figures showed.
Among EU states, Greece and Portugal had the highest death tolls, at 180 and 163 respectively per million inhabitants in 2001. The lowest was Britain at 60 per million.
Novo Código: Em 2004
1 Passará a ser contra-ordenação o automobilista ou o passageiro atirarem beatas ou quaisquer objectos incandescentes para o exterior dos veículos.
2 As coimas por desrespeito à prioridade dos peões sofrerão um agravamento, sendo também reduzida a tolerância da velocidade de 30 km/h para 20 km/h nas zonas urbanas.
3 Estacionar em cima de passadeiras ou nos passeios, impedindo a passagem dos peões, poderá levar à apreensão da carta de condução.
4 Os iletrados deixarão de poder requer exame oral. Saber e ler escrever será obrigatório para a obtenção da carta de condução. Os candidatos terão ainda de passar por uma prova num parque de manobras antes do exame final.
5 As coimas por excesso de velocidade e de álcool ao volante serão agravadas. Conduzir com uma taxa de de álcool superior a 0,8 g/l dará uma multa entre os 500 e os 2500 euros.
6 Utilizar os telemóveis sem auricular ou sistema de alta voz dará imediata apreensão da carta de condução.
7 Desrespeito pelo sinal de paragem obrigatória nos cruzamentos, entroncamentos e rotundas dará também apreensão da carta de condução.
8 O período probatório (recém-encartados) passa de dois para três anos.
9 Passará a ser obrigatório o uso de coletes reflectores quando o condutor imobilizar o veículo durante o período nocturno.
10 Criação de um novo enquadramento jurídico para acelerar os processos rodoviários nos tribunais.
[act.: Venda de Coletes Reflectores Pode Induzir Automobilistas em Erro]

TECNOSFERA

Spammer receives record fine in Denmark: A Danish telecoms equipment firm has been fined a record £37,000 for sending unsolicited commercial e-mails – otherwise known as spam. The conviction is one of the first in Europe to use the anti-spam provisions of a recent Directive.

ECOPOL

Unravelling the Known Unknowns: Why no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found in Iraq
(E a não perder este Press Briefing by Scott McClellan...)

CONTAMINANTES

Dos blogues:
António Granado e Elisabete Barbosa autores de livro "Weblogs – Diário de Bordo"
Ergonomia da Comunicação: Blog sobre o fenómeno dos Web logs.
Porque será? Não sei se já se aperceberam que há um movimento silencioso e discreto que, de há uns dias para cá, fez com que vários bloggers deixassem de linkar o Abrupto (entre os quais eu me incluo).
O Vítima da Crise voltou. Sinal da retoma (para ele).
Atitude Louvável: Porque não haveremos, também nós, de reivindicar ao contribuinte um apoio continuado, que nos permita desenvolver sem estrangulamentos esta nova e mui nobre arte de blogar?
Homenagem: só há pouco reparei como se chamava a rua que encima o Parque Eduardo VII : Alameda Cardeal Cerejeira.
Ora até que enfim, uma justa homenagem.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Library Periodicals Expenses: Comparison of Non-Subscription Costs of Print and Electronic Formats on a Life-Cycle Basis
The Cost per Article Reading of Open Access Articles

VITAMEDIAS

The Rise of the Micro-Mags: The basic idea is to find the most affluent neighborhoods in the country and saturate them with lush, edgy, highly atmospheric magazines that create a breathless exclusivity about their scene.
The challenge is to create an editorial product compelling enough to defeat the “junk mail” perception that clings to almost anything distributed for free, and to convince local advertisers that readers will respond.

TECNOSFERA

Google faces trademark suit over keyword ads: A lawsuit filed this week has intensified an ongoing dispute over whether Google's policy of selling ads related to search terms is legal or involves trademark infringement.
Court Rules for Playboy in Internet Dispute: A U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Playboy Enterprises Inc.'s trademark terms "playboy" and "playmate" should be protected even in Internet searches that prompt pop-up advertisements.
(Ainda sobre o Google: Fugitive Nabbed Because Of Date's Google Search: The man accused of bilking Cincinnati out of $184,000 finally was busted by a woman in New York City who did some background research before going on a date with him.)

TECNOSFERA

Qual o significado disto? 2.2 Million Members Lost by AOL in 2003: America Online Inc. lost 2.2 million subscribers in 2003 and 399,000 subscribers during the last three months of the year, while every other major business segment at parent Time Warner Inc. grew during the year, the media giant reported yesterday.
The quarterly decline in subscribers at the Dulles-based Internet firm would have been greater except AOL included 431,000 nonpaying customers on free trials or retention programs in its customers totals. When those figures are taken into account, America Online lost 830,000 paying subscribers in the quarter, according to company officials.

TECNOSFERA

SoundBlox is an MP3 audio playing Internet application [free for non-commercial use] that can be embedded into a personal blog template or Web page, and displayed in any modern Web browser.

VITAMEDIAS

O caso Hutton e a BBC, os políticos e os jornalistas?
The future of journalism is at stake: Most people, even now, are more inclined to trust the BBC than the government - this one, or any other. [dica de Ponto Media]
[act.: ler também este excerto do relatório, recuperado pelo Mar Salgado: The communication by the media of information (including information obtained by investigative reporters) on matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media. Where a reporter is intending to broadcast or publish information impugning the integrity of others the management of his broadcasting company or newspaper should ensure that a system is in place whereby his editor or editors give careful consideration to the wording of the report and to whether it is right in all the circumstances to broadcast or publish it.]

ECOPOL

Realmente, esta notícia de que PS requereu divulgação das classificações só tem piada quando se lê o PontoMedia...

VITAMEDIAS

A Sic responde a Eduardo Cintra Torres
[act.: Contra Factos...]

TECNOSFERA

MyDoom virus declared worst ever
E-Mail Worm Snarls Computers Around Globe
MyDoom Spawns More Potent Variant
MyDoom Variant Emerges, Targets Microsoft
W32.Novarg.A@mm
Government planning cyberalert system
FBI tackles web virus
Can the Feds Fight Viruses?
Cleaning Your Windows

CULTURAS IN VITRO

76th Annual Academy Awards - Nominee List

TECNOSFERA

Search Engine Relationship Chart (tm)

VITAMEDIAS

Smells Like Teen (Marketing) Spirit: Madison Avenue was once known for men in gray flannel suits. Today some of its most credible foot soldiers wear T-shirts and sneakers. They are 280,000 strong, ages 13 to 19, all of them enlisted by an arm of Procter & Gamble called Tremor. Their mission is to help companies plant information about their brands in living rooms, schools and other crevices that are difficult for corporate America to infiltrate. These kids deliver endorsements in school cafeterias, at sleepovers, by cell phone and by e-mail. They are being tapped to talk up just about everything, from movies to milk and motor oil--and they do it for free.
Manipulation? To some extent. Some kids aren't even aware that they're participating in a word-of-mouth marketing effort on an unprecedented scale. Roughly 1% of the U.S. teen population is involved.

VITAMEDIAS

Department of Corrections: How Journalists Report Errors on the Web
Remember, cyberspace means never having to say you're sorry.
All the News That's Fit to Skewer: Tim Withers is a careful reader. A very careful reader.
Every time The New York Times' political reporter Jodi Wilgoren writes an article, Withers spends as much as an hour examining every period, predicate and gerund in her story. He combs through Wilgoren's word choices, pouncing on any hint of political bias. And then, when he's done with his analysis, Withers posts his findings to The Wilgoren Watch, his new weblog devoted to all things Jodi.
Básico: Vasco Pulido Valente (VPV, para abreviar) regressa às páginas dos jornais no DN da próxima sexta-feira. No entretanto, aqui fica, não sem alguma indignação, um pequeno excerto da entrevista que o mesmo deu no passado fim-de-semana (fds, para abreviar) à revista Notícias Magazine. Leiam e bebam uma água das pedras logo de seguida. Um chá também serve. Foi o que se arranjou nesta falta de tempo danada.
"Fiz uma pesquisa na Internet à procura de opiniões sobre si, e...
Posso dizer uma coisa? As pessoas que escrevem nos blogues, como muitas das que escrevem nos jornais, como as que falam na televisão, dão aquilo que elas julgam que serão opiniões. Políticos falhados, jornalistas frustrados e tanta outra gente completamente iletrada, que não conhece os assuntos, e podiam dizer aquilo, ou o contrário, que era igual ao litro. Mesmo a maior parte dos cronistas são ignorantes, e o que escrevem são crónicas desnecessárias ou desabafos, aquilo a que chamo jornalismo da indignação. Mas faz muito sucesso, porque como as indignações são básicas, há muita gente a partilhá-las, e a ficar feliz por o senhor X, que até escreve no jornal, pensar como elas."

ECOPOL

101 Dumbest Moments in Business: annual review of the most shameful, dishonest, and just plain stupid moments of the past year.

TECNOSFERA

Tell your wife to cut out the blog right now: Dear Harriette: When my wife gets mad at me, she writes on her Web site what I did wrong that day. We are in counseling, but sometimes my words will be twisted around on the site. She tells me not to go to the site, but I know one of our neighbors does and I want to know what is being said about me on a public Web site. Any advice? - Tom, Texas
NEC, NTT-X, other firms start blogging: Blogging has come to Japan, and leading Internet firms and venture companies see such services as a way to attract subscribers and generate more banner ad revenue.

TECNOSFERA

Google targeted by pranksters: Web site operators, bloggers skew results
Google's response to the bombs -- which have increased in frequency during the presidential campaign -- is generally laissez-faire, according to Peter Norvig, the company's director of search quality. Though aware of many of the manipulations, he doesn't consider them to be a major problem. [...]
Google isn't the only Internet bombing range. Other search engines routinely fall victim, though some appear to be less vulnerable.

TECNOSFERA

Was President Clinton a Luddite? The archives of the Bill Clinton presidential library will contain 39,999,998 e-mails by the former president's staff and two by the man himself. [...]
One of them may not actually qualify for electronic communication because it was a test to see if the commander in chief knew how to push the button on an e-mail.

CONTAMINANTES

Film records effects of eating only McDonald's for a month: Spurlock, a tall New Yorker of usually cast-iron constitution, made himself the guinea pig in this dogged investigation into the effects of fast food on the body. He ate only at McDonald's for a month - three meals, every day - and took a camera crew along to record it. If a server offered to super-size his order, he was obliged to accept - and to ingest everything, gherkins and all.
Neither Spurlock, 33, nor the three doctors who agreed to monitor his health during the experiment were prepared for the degree of ruin it would wreak on his body. Within days, he was vomiting up his burgers and battling with headaches and depression. And his sex drive vanished.

VITAMEDIAS

É um texto a ler, este A imprensa é livre, os jornalistas não, até pelas questões que aprofunda o Jornalismo e Comunicação.
Mas apontando para a sua base - a de que "Circula na Internet uma mensagem com o título 'Coincidências'" - coloco duas questões:
1) textos na Internet, não validados nem confirmados, devem servir para um crítico de televisão elaborar um texto como este a partir dessa base "virtual" (mesmo que o resto do seu discurso seja válido na mesma...)?
2) uma busca pouco científica mas com diferentes variantes no Google, apenas descobre duas referências ao suposto texto das "Coincidências" que Eduardo Cintra Torres (ECT) enuncia no texto: Vejam lá estas coincidências, que remete para a origem com o mesmo título.
Parece que não "circula" na Web, apesar da Internet ser muito mais do que isso - mas o Google também indexa outras coisas e não descobriu nada. Pode ser um erro da "googlização", até porque aquele texto é de Novembro de 2003.
Por outro lado, ECT refere "A que se somam estes factos" (sobre Carlos Cruz, a filha ou Herman José, intervenientes em programas da SIC), sem que se saiba que já são "factos" dele e não da tal mensagem da Internet (repetindo o erro de que Ricardo Costa é "editor de política" quando é director adjunto de informação na SIC e director da SIC Notícias).
Eu sei que jornalistas e cronistas não se regem pela mesma bitola mas só apetece recomendar o primeiro parágrafo deste A regra do 'off': "Será que as notícias sobre a actividade política que vão além de discursos e iniciativas publicitadas pelos próprios actores políticos têm, necessariamente, de basear-se em fontes não identificadas? E porque hão-de os leitores acreditar na informação que lhes é fornecida nessa base, se só raramente lhes são apresentadas razões para a não identificação das fontes? Bastará o nome do jornal, ou do jornalista, para garantir ao leitor que a fonte da notícia ou os dados em que ela se baseia são credíveis?"

VITAMEDIAS

Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society: By changing the social conditions of speech, digital technologies lead to new social conflicts over the ownership and control of informational capital. The free speech principle is the battleground over many of these conflicts.

ECOPOL

Para os que tinham dúvidas ou falam das empresas como sendo "do Estado": Estrangeiros dominam metade do capital da EDP e da PT: No caso da EDP, fonte oficial da eléctrica destaca que 54% das acções privatizadas, excluindo os 5% da Iberdrola, estão nas mãos de estrangeiros. Por seu turno, na Portugal Telecom, cerca de 70% do seu capital pertence a investidores não residentes.

VITAMEDIAS

Philips Steps up Rollable-Display Development
Philips Creates Foldable Screens for E-Newspapers: "We can produce this in batches. It's no longer a research project. We're going to build a pilot line that should be ready in 2005 to make one million displays a year," a spokesman at Philips Research said.
[ver, a propósito, projecto da Fujitsu]

TECNOSFERA

Pac-Man freebie revives memories: No game has ever come close to dominating pop-culture as much as Pac-Man, which Namco reckons has been played more than 10 billion times since its release over 20 years ago.
[E o Tetris?...]

VITAMEDIAS

Will Mainstream Media Co-opt Blogs and the Internet? Traditional media companies are also watching the rise of blogging with an interested but anxious eye – much as they did the emergence of the Internet a decade ago, noted Hubert Burda [Publisher and CEO, Hubert Burda Media]. While many analysts doubt a profitable business model will ever be found for blogging, Burda disagreed. Most of the media trends predicted at events like the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum have proven to be wrong, he argued. “It’s like art – you can’t predict it. But if the audience is there, a business model will emerge. I’m sure of it.”
Worries that blogs might undermine the news gathering and filtering role of the mainstream media also are probably overblown, [Jay Rosen, Chair, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, New York University] argued. By converting news consumers into producers, bloggers are simply reinventing the communication techniques of an earlier era, when a learned elite exchanged knowledge and opinion via private correspondence. Technology makes it possible to extend the same methods to a broad audience. “The age of the mass media is just that – an age,” Rosen said. “It doesn’t have to last forever.”
Clearing the Data Smog: The information explosion means a major paradigm shift in the way human beings receive and apply knowledge. For example, much of the information circulating on the Internet now is recycled from other sources, noted moderator Theodore Zeldin, President, The Oxford Muse, United Kingdom. Roughly 95% of scientific research is never used. “I would argue,” said Zeldin, “that our universities are manufacturers of ‘waste information.’” [...]
Journalists, who have been trained as information providers, [Rosen] observed, are now becoming filters, essentially editors. Although many journalists seem concerned that mass media may disappear, Rosen sees the change elsewhere. “I don’t think mass media will disappear,” he said. “The way people communicate will change. What is under threat is the way we see people as masses.”
Journalists still want to hang on to the idea of giving the public what they think it needs to know, Rosen continued, “but the problem is: how do you know what that is?” With so much choice and interactivity, the decision process is passing to the audience. An example of the change is the sudden explosion of bloggers on the Net. Success or failure of a blog is really determined by how many people on the Net decide to link to a specific blog, or to ignore another. Rosen noted that the most successful bloggers build trust with their readers, but at the same time the readers are drawn back to the sites by the unpredictability of the content.
Nothing can force someone on the Net to read something that isn’t interesting, and the competition is fierce.
We're News, They're Propaganda: Ethan Zuckerman [Founder and CEO, Geekcorps], described the important role Web log authors, or “bloggers,” can play in providing news from places that the mainstream media fails to cover. The media is biased in what it does and does not cover, Zuckerman said, and its stress on infotainment often neglects important, but un-sexy, stories. [...]
News organizations are also biased towards competition, [Ibrahim Helal, Editor-in-Chief, Al Jazeera Satellite Channel] said. They tend to race for the same stories for fear of losing out to their rivals. “Competition is sometimes driving us to nowhere,” he said.
Mel Young [President, International Network of Street Papers], lamented the tendency for journalists to interview other journalists as “experts”. The increasing concentration of ownership in the media is eliminating objectivity, he said. Laziness and shrinking budgets make it more acceptable to interview a colleague than to seek out genuine opinions or analysis.

TECNOSFERA

Gates: I'll rid the world of spam: Microsoft is investigating three different solutions to rid inboxes from the clutter of unsolicited bulk emails. [...]
The ultimate solution would be to make senders of email pay a fee if their mail was rejected as spam.
Gates: Spam To Be Canned By 2006: People would set a level of monetary risk - low or high, depending on their choice - for receiving e-mail from strangers. If the e-mail turns out to be from a long-lost relative, for example, the recipient would charge nothing. But if it is unwanted spam, the sender would have to fork over the cash.
“In the long run, the monetary (method) will be dominant,” Gates predicted.
He conceded, however, that his prognostications have not always been on the mark.
A Spam-Free Future By Bill Gates
We are making progress with new software derived from advanced work in the field of machine learning - the design of systems that learn from data and grow smarter over time. The software learns from a vast and continually growing archive of e-mail provided by nearly 200,000 of our e-mail customers who have volunteered to classify millions of messages as legitimate or not. This feedback enables us to identify spam with unprecedented precision based on key words, message structure, even the time it was sent -- more than 500,000 characteristics in all. Early reports have indicated that this Microsoft SmartScreen technology is blocking as much as 95 percent of spam, and we expect it to get even smarter as it learns from a continuing flow of feedback. Many other e-mail providers also are making great strides in creating technology that better protects people from spam.

[Se a tecnologia era tão promissora, porquê obrigar a pagar pelos "emails"?... E quando alguém envia um "email" que interessa para um destinatário desconhecido e este o rejeita? Que modelo de negócio é este?...]

AOL tests caller ID for e-mail: America Online is testing an antispam filter intended to accurately trace the origin of e-mail messages, a move that could bring new accountability to the Net if it proves reliable.
OECD Workshop on Spam, Brussels, Belgium, 2-3 February 2004
Gallery Show Seeks the Art in Spam, Seen Through the Eyes of the Future: Using the sort of displays common in natural history museums, the exhibit examines other aspects of the world as captured in the amber of spam.

VITAMEDIAS

Commission Staff Working Document profiles role of wide-screen and high definition in global digital TV roll-out: Promised in the Commissions' recent Switchover Communication, this Commission Staff Working Paper argues that the wide-screen (16:9) format can help accelerate the transition to digital television. Broadcasters can use wide-screen to differentiate the quality of digital television from analogue TV, with its traditional "old movie" screen format using the 4:3 ratio. The document also notes that the time is ripe for a revival of high definition television (HDTV) in Europe.

CONTAMINANTES

Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: Risks for companies and scientific institutions (in order to make them aware of the risks of becoming involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.)

VITAMEDIAS

O Terras do Nunca fala de "Autores e direitos", salientando como são assuntos "pouco atrantes" em meios como os blogues. Sem dúvida.
Para contribuir para clarificar as coisas (nomeadamente as dúvidas do Adufe), no que se refere às "notícias", transcrevo o Artigo 7º do Código do Direito de Autor, sobre a "Exclusão de protecção":
1 - Não constituem objecto de protecção:
a) As notícias do dia e os relatos de acontecimentos diversos com carácter de simples informações de qualquer modo divulgadas;
b) Os requerimentos, alegações, queixas e outros textos apresentados por escrito ou oralmente perante autoridades ou serviços públicos;
c) Os textos propostos e os discursos proferidos perante assembleias ou outros orgãos colegiais, políticos e administrativos, de âmbito nacional, regional ou local, ou em debates públicos sobre assuntos de interesse comum;
d) Os discursos políticos.
2 - A reprodução integral, em separata, em colecção ou noutra utilização conjunta, de discursos, peças oratórias e demais textos referidos nas alíneas c) e d) do nº 1 só pode ser feita pelo autor ou com o seu consentimento.
3 - A utilização por terceiro da obra referida no nº 1, quando livre, deve limitar-se ao exigido pelo fim a atingir com a sua divulgação.
4 - Não é permitida a comunicação dos textos a que se refere a alínea b) do nº 1 quando estes textos forem por natureza confidenciais ou dela possa resultar prejuízo para a honra ou reputação do autor ou de qualquer outra pessoa, salvo decisão judicial em contrário proferida em face de prova da existência de interesse legítimo superior ao subjacente à proibição.

Como é óbvio, não é suficiente para responder a todas as questões. É só uma contribuição inicial. Junto-lhe a proposta de leitura deste texto: The Tyranny of Copyright? A number of influential lawyers, scholars and activists are increasingly concerned that copyright law is curbing our freedoms and making it harder to create anything new. This could be the first new social movement of the century.

[act.: A blogosfera tá cheia de Claras Pinto Correia]

TECNOSFERA

Apple's 1984 Commercial
Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

ZITE

musicplasma: the music visual search engine

.DE!

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool (Nothin' Fancy Cafe, Roswell, New Mexico)
THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.
Q Mr. President, how are you?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm hungry and I'm going to order some ribs.

TECNOSFERA

Information Security Zeitgeist: The emergence of trends and patterns in the security community

.DE!

Magazine directs climbers over cliff: Britain's biggest-selling hiking magazine apologized Wednesday after its latest issue contained a route that would lead climbers off the edge of a cliff on Britain's tallest peak.

ECOPOL

Infiltration of files seen as extensive: Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media [...].
From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password.

TECNOSFERA

Google spawns social networking service: Google tip-toed into the hot market of online social networks with the quiet launch of Orkut.com ["an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends"]

VITAMEDIAS

BBC develops media player that will let you watch TV programmes at any time via the internet.
The new Interactive Media Player, which the BBC hopes to pilot later this year, will also let you access shows that you’ve missed from the week before.

VITAMEDIAS

Fujitsu one step closer to Digital Paper Production: a prototype electronic paper which is comparable to regular copy paper in brightness and thickness. Fujitsu hopes to have the paper in regular production by 2006. [via Jornalismo e Comunicação]

.DE!

Um texto positivo sobre Portugal?!?!? Contribution of Portugal to world civilisation [claro que quando vemos a data do texto percebemos que é no futuro...]

VITAMEDIAS

The blogging panel at Davos: I think we all agreed that the ability for blogs to talk with and become one with the audience was key.
What was interesting was the number of people from the mass media in the audience who still seemed to think that blogs were either just poor quality news or that bloggers were just wannabe journalists. [...]
blogs are much more similar to the spirit of the "freedom of the press" referred to in the US constitution. IE citizens with presses.

PHOTO-GRAFIA

Desconstrução

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Convenhamos que ainda há gente com estilo, o que, no nosso país, é cada vez mais raro.
Veja-se Nuno Markl, o autor de O Homem que Mordeu o Cão.
Descobriu agora o que escrevi em Janeiro de 2003. Afirmava eu então que "O fenómeno de "O Homem que Mordeu o Cão" [ou o fenómeno do homem que não mordeu o cão mas garante que o fez: em nenhum lado do "best-seller" ele refere as fontes de onde retirou as histórias - e toda a gente lhe dá os parabéns e não questionam a "pirataria"!!!... Quanto a direitos de autor, vou ali e já venho...]
Pois o Nuno resolveu - com toda a legitimidade - retorquir agora quando descobriu o texto, explicitando a sua posição. Com a sua expressa licença, aqui vão os comentários trocados por "email".
(Uma nota lateral: tomara todos os políticos ou jornalistas ou outros com responsabilidades públicas terem a mesma disposição do Nuno para divulgar, questionar ou responder aos seus (e)leitores/rádio-ouvintes em público: seria a demonstração de que os blogues ou outros meios interactivos afinal servem para algo na comunicação entre produtores e receptores de mensagens.)

Nuno: De vez em quando parto à caça, na web, do que se diz de mim e das coisas que faço. É uma boa maneira de não ficar autista e de aprender alguma coisa (aprende-se, sobretudo, com as sovas). Encontrei a sua levemente irada nota sobre o livro d'O Homem Que Mordeu o Cão, completa com a observação sobre o facto de eu ter omitido a referência às fontes onde fui buscar as histórias e qualquer coisa envolvendo direitos de autor.
Muito bem: o HQMC é uma rubrica de notícias bizarras. Notícias, como em noticiário. A maioria das histórias, fui buscá-las (e vou buscá-las diariamente) a um sem-fim de agências noticiosas internacionais, como a Reuters - o mesmo método seguido por noticiários de todo o mundo. Que eu saiba, não se costuma pagar direitos de autor sobre notícias, sobre factos reais. E os factos são factos - a ideia da minha rubrica é pegar neles (e não inventá-los ou roubá-los aos "criativos" das agências noticiosas) e usá-los como pontos de partida para o meu próprio humor.
Fica feito o esclarecimento.

PedroF: eu não contesto esse seu método no programa radiofónico - nomeadamente pelas razões por si explicadas - mas não posso deixar de o fazer relativamente à edição em livro. Até por uma simples cortesia para as fontes - e nem todas são agências noticiosas, como por várias vezes já referiu no seu programa. Não estragava nada, apenas engrandecia o autor.
De resto - e para lhe demonstrar que se trata não de "ira contra o autor" mas apenas de "mania dos direitos de autor" (é mais forte do que eu...) - aproveito esta oportunidade para lhe dar parabéns pelo fantástico programa e derivados, nomeadamente o livro, cujo sucesso só comprova como andamos precisados de bom humor :)

Nuno: O que acontece é que as histórias do Cão dividem-se em vários tipos: as notícias de agência (impossíveis de determinar quem são os seus autores, apenas que foram factos que aconteceram e foram noticiados por inúmeras agências e jornais), as histórias enviadas por ouvintes (sendo que muitas delas são notícias de agência; no caso da história de Zé Bomba, no primeiro livro, fiz a justiça possível ao autor, nomeando-o como podia - ou seja, como "Zé Bomba", uma vez que ele pediu que fosse tratado por esse nome!), as que circulam pela net e são anónimas (como a lendária história do assentador de tijolos) e, sobretudo no segundo livro, muito material da minha lavra pessoal (como as teorias sobre canto gregoriano, futebol e taxistas, etc).
Portanto, na sua grande maioria, é mesmo difícil ou impossível determinar a fonte. De notar que - e se o Pedro é, como diz, ouvinte, sabe disto - coisa que evito é contar (no livro ou na rádio) a história e está despachado. O meu lado de autor está no ângulo que dou à história e aos comentários que a elas junto... Senão era fácil, e apesar de ser um preguiçoso do caraças, tenho suficiente brio profissional no que toca à escrita do humor (afinal de contas escrevo graçolas vai para mais de 10 anos... É o que faço para viver) para ser mais do que um mero papagaio de coisas escritas por outros.
Mas pronto, está esclarecido. E agradeço a observação - sempre que possível, tentarei ainda com mais afinco determinar a origem e fazer justiça a quem revelou esta ou aquela história. O que contestei foi o tom usado no blog... Pareceu-me a crítica fácil e batida do "este gajo rouba as histórias a outros e quem recebe os parabéns é ele".
Compreendo que para quem não esteja minimamente dentro do universo do Cão, a coisa possa soar assim... Mas se ainda por cima me diz que é ouvinte, menos razão acho que tem para insinuar que há um lado sinistro e obscuro na obra Markliana. ;-)
Mas pronto, paz! E ainda bem que conto consigo entre os ouvintes!

PedroF: Como antes expliquei, era precisamente para evitar essa "crítica fácil e batida do 'este gajo rouba as histórias a outros e quem recebe os parabéns é ele'" que uma nota sobre as fontes (no livro, CD, DVD, programa da peça de teatro, etc...) resolvia o assunto sem grandes problemas - mesmo entendendo o lado profissional de que não se trata de um "papagaio" de histórias bizarras. E o tom usado no blogue foi de crítica nesse sentido (relativamente ao livro), nem mais, nem menos.
Aliás, concorda e compreende "que para quem não esteja minimamente dentro do universo do Cão, a coisa possa soar assim..." Infelizmente, digo eu, porque acaba por não se dar o devido valor ao seu trabalho pessoal de produção criativa.
Em paralelo, não insinuei "que há um lado sinistro e obscuro na obra Markliana". Aliás, se o dissesse, isso levava-nos noutras direcções como a da fatiga dos criadores originais em Portugal, numa opinião puramente pessoal.
O Nuno, tal como as Produções Fictícias, o Alvim, o Herman José e outros, sofrem da "síndrome do sucesso". Ou seja, estão obrigados a produzir de uma forma industrial que acaba por se afastar da criatividade espontânea do início das suas obras apresentadas em público. O resultado é, para um mero ouvinte/espectador como eu, uma quebra na qualidade. Mas essa já é outra conversa - um lado sinistro e nada obscuro da obra PedroFiana...

[act.: Em defesa do atacado: o Terras do Nunca refere que Markl viola o direito de propriedade das notícias de agência e explica porquê. Mas Markl também declarou que as usa, entre outras, e eu presumo que a elas tenha acesso legítimo na rádio. Ou não?]

VITAMEDIAS

Theoretical Perspectives on Interactivity: home for the online, open-to-the-public version of [Douglas Rushkoff's] New York University course for Spring 2004

VITAMEDIAS

Theory consolidation in the study of journalism: A comparative analysis of the news coverage of the HIV/AIDS issue in four countries [in 1993], por Nélson Traquina
[via a excelente indicação do Ponto Media]

ZITE

A ver estes Trunk Monkey Videos

TECNOSFERA

Passado
Forgotten Electronics of the 70s and 80s
Time Warp: Archive of Vintage Technology Through the Decades
Futuro
I Robot Now: world's first fully automated domestic assistant

VITAMEDIAS

Younger readers shun newspapers, get news from Net: Analysts say it appears that the Internet has permanently shifted the reading habits of young people, and they are unlikely to take up reading printed newspapers when they grow older as earlier generations did. This raises important questions about the future of daily newspapers and who will read them
The young and the newsless: Why 18-30's tune out mainstream media: Want a punch line? Twenty-one percent consider comedy outlets such as "SNL's" "Weekend Update" and Comedy Central's "Indecision 2004" coverage on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" their regular sources for campaign news. According to the survey, Americans under 30 cite these shows nearly as frequently as newspapers and broadcast news sources as their election news outlets of choice.
Contra-corrente? Cofina estuda nova revista dirigida ao target compreendido entre os 15 e os 25 anos.

CONTAMINANTES

Five Ideas for 2004:
IDEA 1. Organization is the hardest part of user experience work.
IDEA 2. The big picture is the only picture.
IDEA 3. Experience is bigger than Web usability.
IDEA 4. Blogs are just content management systems.
IDEA 5: Managing one's bits is an increasingly essential skill.

ECOPOL

New sites fact check politicians, journalists: So we have FactCheck watching the politicians, but who's watching the watchers?
Engineering Google Results to Make a Political Point: Google bombing has quickly become an armchair sport among those who have a message to broadcast and perhaps a bit too much time on their hands.

VITAMEDIAS

?Hacia dónde van los weblogs? Sin embargo, los weblogs pueden ser un complemento a estos medios por su flanco más débil, el análisis y la interpretación de la realidad. Además también funcionan como filtros de información que dan más o menos relevancia a ciertas noticias, independientemente de la línea de los medios tradicionales.
El "problema" es que weblogs arrastran características propias de su origen como diarios personales y fuentes de experimentación constante.

VITAMEDIAS

Television Commercials Come to the Web: Beginning [today], more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising.

ZITE

website mixmaster: Enter a layout URL + Enter a content URL + mix

TECNOSFERA

Yahoo! Research Labs: Research Projects

ECOPOL

Soccer Vs. McWorld: What could be more global than soccer? The world’s leading professional players and owners pay no mind to national borders, with major teams banking revenues in every currency available on the foreign exchange and billions of fans cheering for their champions in too many languages to count. But in many ways, the beautiful game reveals much more about globalization’s limits than its possibilities.

TECNOSFERA

Hey! Where's the problem? "Hey!" is an informal way to say hello. It indicates kindness, simple courtesy and an economy of words.
But a 13-year-old boy at Richland Middle School in Richland Hills was suspended for three days in December because he sent that simple message to every computer in the school using an archaic form of instant messaging.
net send * HEY!

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Comfort of strangers: The most intriguing literary event last year wasn’t the arrival of Harry Potter No5, or the waste of the Booker Prize on DBC Pierre, nor even the potty elevation of JRR Tolkien in The Big Read. It was the rise of the literary weblog.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Self-Publish And Be Damned? Not Always. I brought out my own book and beat the odds.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

OCLC Shares Its Strategic Vision: The 2003 Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition report reviews global issues affecting the future of libraries, museums, archives, and librarians.

VITAMEDIAS

Oscar Mascarenhas responde à Causa Nossa
Liberdade de Informação e Segredo de Justiça por Vital Moreira
Balsemão Acusa Políticos de "Ataques Superficiais" à Imprensa: Em jeito de recado para Sampaio e para a classe política em geral, que, perante os desenvolvimentos do processo Casa Pia tem vindo a reivindicar limitações para o uso da liberdade de imprensa, o presidente do grupo Impresa afirmou que "por vezes, a comunicação social é atacada de uma maneira superficial e genérica". E rematou: "É preciso reafirmar quão importante é o jornalismo para todos nós e para a democracia".
O poder que está nos bastidores do poder: Elegemos os governantes mas o poder está, afinal, nos bastidores. Foi essa realidade que Alistair Beaton captou em Feelgood (estreou em Londres em 2001) e que a partir de hoje, na encenação de António Feio, sob o título Deixa-Me Rir, estará no Teatro Villaret, em Lisboa.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Greeting Big Brother With Open Arms: For 50 years, Big Brother was an unambiguous symbol of malignant state power, totalitarianism's all-seeing eye. Then Big Brother became a hip reality television show, in which 10 cohabiting strangers submitted to round-the-clock camera monitoring in return for the chance to compete for $500,000.
That transformation is telling, says Mark Andrejevic, a professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa at Iowa City. [...]
Reality shows glamorize surveillance, he writes, presenting it "as one of the hip attributes of the contemporary world," "an entree into the world of wealth and celebrity" and even a moral good. [...]
As seductive as this sounds, in Mr. Andrejevic's view reality television is essentially a scam: propaganda for a new business model that only pretends to give consumers more control while in fact subjecting them to increasingly sophisticated forms of monitoring and manipulation. [...]
In short, Mr. Andrejevic said, reality television's true beneficiaries are not the shows' cast members (who can wind up making little more than minimum wage for the hours — or months — they spend before the camera) or ordinary viewers (who don't really choose what happens on their television screens) but the marketers, advertisers and corporate executives who have a large stake in seeing surveillance portrayed as benign.
Of course, he conceded, his students don't necessarily see it this way. Raised on Web logs, Google, cellphones and instant messaging, they "divulge much more information about themselves on a daily basis than previous generations," he said, and they don't associate the idea of surveillance with a totalitarian Big Brother.

CONTAMINANTES

The Lab Animal: Elite athletes always have and always will pursue every competitive advantage — health and the law be damned. Is genetic manipulation next?

VITAMEDIAS

¿Periodismo sin periodistas? El fenómeno de las 'weblogs', bitácoras o páginas 'web' personales ha generado un debate intenso acerca del futuro de la información en la Red. Por primera vez, cualquiera puede publicar un texto - información, pero no siempre periodística - en un medio de alcance mundial de manera extremadamente sencilla. ¿Convierte este hecho a cualquier ciudadano en periodista? El Congreso de Periodismo Digital de Huesca ha sido testigo de la lógica diferencia de opinión entre 'bloggers' y periodistas, y la conclusión parece clara: un 'blog' y un medio no son lo mismo.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Did Big Music Really Sink the Pirates? Surveys showing that lawsuits have greatly reduced file-sharing may be seriously flawed. By some measures, swaps are actually escalating
[act.: Se incrementa el número de descargas de música por Internet a través de redes P2P]

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Exploring the relation between thought and sound: Music plays tunes in the brain that scientists are just beginning to hear. Recent discoveries include how people's emotional reaction to music can alleviate pain, why certain musical intervals sound more pleasing than others, and how musical training alters the growing brains of children.

VITAMEDIAS

Media expert pessimistic about state of news: In his new book, "Backstory: Inside the Business of News" [...], New Yorker media columnist Ken Auletta takes a bleak look at the condition of America's newspapers and broadcast newsrooms. Auletta has found a lack of humility in the newsroom, where prominent journalists are more concerned with becoming paid pundits than asking questions, and lines between advertising and news are often crossed.

VITAMEDIAS

Encontrado o preço da fama: mais de 26 mil dólares... :)
Fake Magazine Editor Allegedly Cons Thousands Of Dollars: The city attorney's office filed a 15-count complaint against 26-year-old Adam B. Winer [...]. They said he pretended to be another Adam Winer who is an editor for FHM magazine and scammed victims out of more than $26,000.

VITAMEDIAS

Entre o direito e a deontologia
No Causa Nossa:
A autodisciplina jornalística: desacordo continua;
Ainda a autodisciplina jornalística;
Onde se meteu o Conselho Deontológico dos Jornalistas?
[act.: Sampaio defende implicitamente vinculação de jornalistas a segredo de justiça]

VITAMEDIAS

Contra el vicio de copiar y pegar: La búsqueda de la calidad en periodismo es tarea difícil, pero si hablamos de Internet es algo casi imposible, al menos para los participantes de la ponencia 'Entre el rigor y la basura: el reto de la calidad' del Congreso de Periodismo Digital de Huesca. Eduardo Pedreño, director de DiarioRed, arremetió contra la técnica de 'copiar y pegar' información elaborada por otros, tan extendida en la Red.

CONTAMINANTES

Retoma das Viagens Interplanetárias Recebida com Alegria e Cepticismo
How Soon to the Moon? Sending humans back to the moon might divert money from other space science. Is it worth it?
To boldly go? Men on Mars are just so last century: Call me unimaginative but the thing that would make me weep for joy would be a plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars giving every child in the world a school with a roof that did not leak and the best education money can buy. Like the first man on Mars, however, that is something unlikely to happen in my lifetime.
PRESIDENT BUSH PROMISES THE MOON AND MARS (by Robert L. Park)
Why now? Well, it's not "now." To pay for all this, the program depends on money made available by phasing out the shuttle over a period of six years, and completing our commitments to the ISS. After decades of telling the public that these two programs are essential to space exploration, we discover they're just standing in the way. None of this will happen on Bush's watch. Whether he's reelected or not, the big bills won't start coming in until Bush is safely out of office. In fact, it's unlikely to happen at all. Even as the President spoke, the Spirit rover on Mars appeared to be working perfectly. It doesn't break for lunch or complain about the cold nights. Long before a human could land on Mars, there won't be much left to explore. Politicians tend to underestimate the public. An AP poll found 57 percent favor having robots explore the moon and Mars; 38 percent said humans.

VITAMEDIAS

Net No Threat To Newspapers: Rather than compete for readership, newspapers have developed a collaborative relationship with the Web, according to a comprehensive survey by The Media Audit of 85 U.S. metro markets. The firm found that newspaper Web sites help to extend the reach of their print counterparts, minimizing rivalry between the two versions.

ECOPOL

Survey: Blogs, Chats Key to Campaigns: Political candidates trying to use the Internet to win support from young, Web-wise voters should avoid pop-up and banner ads and instead use interactive media like Internet chats and "blogs," according to a study

VITAMEDIAS

Freelancers drop Globe ruling appeal: Officially ending more than three years of litigation against The Boston Globe, a group of freelance writers and photographers said they will drop their appeal of a November 2002 ruling in favor of the newspaper.
The lawsuit, filed in June 2000, challenged a newly introduced Globe licensing agreement that allowed freelancers to keep their copyright, but gave the paper permission to reproduce their past and future work in other forms, including online, without additional compensation.
The suit over the freelancers' work was viewed by many as a test case in the battle over ownership of online content.

VITAMEDIAS

João Gobern será director de nova revista da Cofina, uma "news magazine" semanal de carácter generalista
Meio.tv: A revista dos profissionais de televisão

TECNOSFERA

Predicting the market evolution of computers: was the revolution really unforeseen
This is a study of how people viewed the future prospects for computers from their inception in the mid-1940s to their establishment as an unequivocal market success in 1964. Based on a reading of the published record it compares two hypotheses, one that holds that no one foresaw the tremendous potential of computers – an error of under guessing – the other that holds that most market forecasts are far too optimistic, a error of over guessing. It concludes that only before 1950 did experts fail to foresee the ways in which computers would change our lives. After that date, expectations soared saved only by the fact the sales likewise soared.

VITAMEDIAS

Más de 200 inscritos acudirán al V Congreso Nacional de Periodismo Digital de Huesca

ZITE

Topix.net: News organized by topic and location

CONTAMINANTES

President Bush Outlines New Vision for Space Program, which includes a proposal to return to the moon by 2020 and establish a base there for trips to Mars and beyond.

TECNOSFERA

Top 10 Private Sector Patent Recipients for the 2003 Calendar Year:
3,415 International Business Machines Corporation
1,992 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
1,893 Hitachi
1,786 Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.
1,759 Hewlett-Packard Development Company
1,707 Micron Technology
1,592 Intel Corporation
1,353 Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
1,313 Samsung Electronics Co.
1,311 Sony Corporation

TECNOSFERA

Internet 'Geek' Image Shattered by New Study: the typical Internet user is an avid reader of books and spends more time engaged in social activities than the non-user, it says. And, television viewing is down among some Internet users by as much as five hours per week compared with Net abstainers, the study added.

VITAMEDIAS

CNBC Stock Rules Could Spur Trend in Media-Experts: The General Electric Co. -owned cable channel laid down new restrictions this week considered among the toughest in the industry, barring news staff and managers, as well as their spouses and dependents, from owning individual stocks or corporate bonds. Other employees such as receptionists and hairstylists can hang onto their stocks, but not buy more.

VITAMEDIAS

As TV gets political, Italians turn it off: Government figures show that the average Italian watches television for four hours a day and, since Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls most of what is broadcast, critics say that the nation is being fed just one political line.
According to one of Italy's leading authors, Umberto Eco, Italy is living under a new kind of dictatorship, the "media regime." The difference between Benito Mussolini's fascist regime and a media regime, Mr. Eco says, is that "in fascist times, people knew that the newspapers and the radio were only communicating government press releases." In Italy today, political opponents are given airtime, Eco says, but they are never allowed to have the last word.
"A media regime does not need to send its opponents to jail. It silences them," he wrote in La Repubblica newspaper earlier this month.

VITAMEDIAS

O Sindicato dos Jornalistas anunciou ontem que FEJ e FIJ apoiam jornalistas portugueses na protecção das fontes.
O Público refere hoje que Federações Internacionais Apoiam Sigilo de Jornalistas Portugueses e o Diário Económico que FEJ e FIJ apoiam jornalistas portugueses, ambos citando directamente a nota do Sindicato.
Ontem e hoje, procurei no endereço da International Federation of Journalists este comunicado mas não o encontrei. Alguém me sabe dizer onde está?

CULTURAS IN VITRO

The Credits Just Keep Going and Going and... (reproductions of the credits from some notable films)

ECOPOL

Air Passenger Code Plan In Motion: Precautions in the name of air security are about to taken to a level unimaginable in the United States only a few years ago.
The Washington Post reports the Bush administration is expected to order as soon as next month the first step in setting up databases on all air passengers, to be used to color-code each air traveler according to his or her potential threat level.
Passengers coded red would be stopped from boarding; yellow would mean additional screening at security checkpoints; and green would mean an only standard level of scrutiny.

CONTAMINANTES

Private lives: Do people write diaries any more? How many still sit down at the end of each day to record people met, things done, thoughts thought, in a bound book and by hand? [...]
Does anyone now keep a diary? Of course they do. Thousands of people. They just call them blogs and put them up on the web instead of down on paper.

ZITE

Mars Fullscreen panoramic image

VITAMEDIAS

PRÓS
Libertinagem de imprensa: É tempo de responsabilizar a comunicação social que abusa da liberdade de imprensa violando o segredo de justiça. Adequar as penas ao crime, de forma a desencorajar a sua prática. Mais tarde ou mais cedo - e quanto mais cedo, melhor - há-de se concluir da inevitabilidade de punir com eficácia a comunicação social que assim prevarica.
&
Jornalistas Querem Ordem
O Lançamento: O primeiro-ministro declarou solenemente que a liberdade de imprensa é «sagrada». Mas a ministra da Justiça deixou escapar um segredo e anunciou que já fez «o trabalho de casa» para alterar a legislação que regula a actividade da imprensa. E como se sabe quem manda nesta maioria, é caso para temer o pior.
CONTRAS
Verdes Contra Tentativa de "Amordaçar a Imprensa"
Mota Amaral Diz-se Frontalmente Contra "Qualquer Forma de Censura à Imprensa"
Sindicato considera limites à liberdade de imprensa suficientes
"Não queremos um estatuto especial para os jornalistas": «O jornalismo tem bitolas. Existem os limites à liberdade de imprensa, a própria Constituição, e o estatuto profissional. Há normas a respeitar. Quem se sente ofendido pode actuar judicialmente», comentou à saída da reunião Alfredo Maia, presidente do SJ.
?
Liberdade de Quê?: É impressão minha ou os políticos portugueses não estão preocupados com os "direitos da personalidade", mas sim com os direitos de algumas personalidades. Deve ser esta mentalidadezinha conspirativa da populaça suburbana, sempre prontinha a diabolizar esses mártires do serviço e do bem público que são os políticos (alguns, talvez uma imensa minoria). Deve ser isso...
Debate Liberdade de Imprensa: Sic Notícias, 23 horas

VITAMEDIAS

Leia-se "Internet acusada de fomentar pornografia infantil": Os crimes ligados à pornografia infantil aumentaram 1500 por cento nos últimos 13 anos devido aos computadores e à Internet [...] ou "Pornografia nos telemóveis".
Leia-se a apresentação do estudo "Child abuse, child pornography and the internet", onde se baseiam as "notícias".
Descubra as diferenças:
1) o estudo só fala do Reino Unido, as notícias deixa pairar o lado internacional da coisa;
2) o estudo refere que a Internet "is facilitating" a exposição das crianças a material inapropriado; as notícias afirmam que os crimes são devidos aos computadores e à Internet.
Pois é...

TECNOSFERA

Mobile Ring Tone Sales Hit $3.5 Billion: Sales of mobile phone ring tones, those tinny song recordings programmed into millions of cell phones around the world, jumped 40 percent in the past year to $3.5 billion, according to a study released Tuesday.
The worldwide sale of ring tones, which started as a marketing gimmick for music labels and mobile phone companies, is roughly equivalent to 10 percent of the $32.2 billion global music market.

TECNOSFERA

Google Fans Fill Web With Buzz Over IPO: The company's refusal to comment on whether it will go public does little to dampen the buzz. For denizens of Silicon Valley and Wall Street alike, the Google IPO has been decreed a monumental event even before it happens, one that has the potential to lift the long-struggling tech sector out of its doldrums.
"It's way better than even money that this is the IPO of the decade," said Roger McNamee, a managing director of the tech-oriented private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. "Everybody and their grandmother knows Google. Demand is going to be off the charts."

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Title fight: Those three or four words on the cover can make all the difference to a book's chances of success
$10,000 book club: MIT professor Michael Hawley set a new Guinness World Record for largest book with the publication of Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom, a 114-page photographic picture book recording four of his visits to the tiny country.
Opening to 1.5 by 2 metres and weighing more than 60 kilograms, the book is so big it needs its own Sherpa. The price? A cool $10,000 (U.S.), 17 times what the average Bhutanese earns in a year, although the books only cost $1,000 each to produce, with the remaining $9,000 benefiting the Bhutanese ministry of education as a charitable donation.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

When languages disappear, culture starts to stagnate: The consensus seems to be that on current trends, between 50 and 90 per cent of the world's 6,000 or so languages will cease to exist over the next century.
Babel's children: Languages may be more different from each other than is currently supposed. That may affect the way people think

TECNOSFERA

The town that turned off BT: the Hebden Bridge community has set up Britain's first cooperative internet service provider (ISP). There are some local ISPs around Britain already, but this co-op version, funded almost entirely without government money, could threaten the very core of BT's future communications business and provide a shining light for like-minded people throughout the country.

VITAMEDIAS

10-Week Summer Program: Purpose: The program is meant to improve public understanding and appreciation of science and technology and to sharpen the ability of the fellows to communicate complex technical issues to non-specialists.

TECNOSFERA

Parents spy on teens by phone: Parents will be able to track their teenagers 24 hours a day using secret bounce-back SMS messages.
Parents using the "text track" technology get a return SMS instantly revealing their child's location.
Teens will have no idea when their parents have done a check-up.

ECOPOL

Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope: A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.

VITAMEDIAS

Internet Said to Gain as Source for News: People are turning increasingly to alternatives like the Internet for news about the presidential campaign, shifting away from traditional outlets like the nightly network news and newspapers, a poll found.

TECNOSFERA

MIT Media Lab launching consumer electronics push: MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative focused on consumer electronics. [...]
The new initiative is aimed at injecting media technology from the fabled Media Lab into the mainstream of the consumer electronics market. The deal will augment MIT's sponsor program and is aimed at giving small- and medium-sized companies access to technology across a wide spectrum of emerging media technologies.

VITAMEDIAS

Viewers Hope Journalists Reform in 2004: People who watch television news are resolute in their conviction that journalists need to reform.

VITAMEDIAS

Forever on TV: reality soap opera that may never end
Forever Eden, which is due to begin this spring, will take a group of unmarried people on an open-ended detour from their lives, transplanting them in a luxury resort abroad and letting them get on with everything attractive, fun-loving single men and women might be expected to do when paid to spend the rest of their days on the beach or in bars.
"These people could be on the air for six months, a year or three years," Mike Darnell, Fox's head of alternative programming, told Variety magazine. "If you want to stay and you play your cards right, you could be on the air forever. It's the first real try at a reality soap opera."

VITAMEDIAS

Trashing the media: You dislike us. You really dislike us. Or maybe the harsher truth is, we've begun to dislike ourselves.
Let's admit it: We in the mainstream media deserve some of this rancor and resentment after the year we've had. [...]
Historically, the media's response has been that when everybody's criticizing them, they must be doing something right. But not everyone buys that rationale. [...]
Sometime in the future, the media may look back on 2003 as the year when a number of warning bells were sounded. But as an industry it seems we're still trying to agree on how to locate the fires, let alone how to put them out.
(via Ponto Media)

VITAMEDIAS

Três anos de [gaffes na] Sic Notícias (via Segundo Impacto)

ZITE

Para o fim de semana:
Improbable Research
Encyclopedia Titanica
Godchecker

VITAMEDIAS

Top CyberJournalist stories of 2003
Top Cartoons of 2003
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003
2003 List of Banished Words

ECOPOL

Portugal Holding Firm in Last Spot: Despite the campaign promises made nearly two years ago by Portuguese Prime Minister José Manuel Durao Barroso, this South European country remains firmly in last spot in the European Union (EU) line-up.
In his March 2002 political campaign, Durao Barroso said he would put Portugal in the group of the most advanced EU countries within a decade. But the bloc's year-end economic, social and human development indicators show that no progress has been made in that direction.

VITAMEDIAS

Iranian Journalist Credits Blogs for Playing Key Role in His Release From Prison

VITAMEDIAS

Salto Alto: como a mulher é vista nos diferentes meios de comunicação

VITAMEDIAS

Três questões, várias citações e duas lembranças:
QUESTÕES
1) Dois cronistas titulam hoje os seus textos de "sociedade anónima" e falam em "leviandade". Coincidência ou sinal dos tempos em que se quer mais censura sem o explicitar claramente?
2) O PSD e o PP querem avançar rapidamente com propostas para maiores limitações à liberdade de imprensa, quando os acusados "políticos" no processo Casa Pia são maioritariamente socialistas. Os partidos do Governo deixam pairar a ideia de que se estão a precaver - o que é péssimo para a democracia.
3) Porquê vincular os jornalistas ao segredo de justiça e não explicar primeiro porque não é punido quem o não cumpre?

CITAÇÕES
Sociedade anónima: Podemos, obviamente, escolher o caminho de silenciar à força os jornais e as televisões. A vantagem imediata é que substituímos as notícias pelos boatos. A vantagem seguinte é que silenciamos de igual modo a incompetência, a irresponsabilidade e a leviandade de métodos de investigação judicial que eu, pessoalmente, não aceitarei jamais num Estado que se proclama de direito. E assim - julga-se - garantir-se-á a tal "serenidade" de que a justiça precisa e salvar-se-á a própria imagem da justiça. Mas salvar-se-á em benefício de quem?
Sociedade anónima: Não se contesta aqui a necessidade de limites à liberdade de imprensa em processos judiciais para evitar a divulgação de factos que estão em segredo de Justiça. Pelo contrário, essa moralização é necessária. O que se repudia é a leviandade com que se puxa do argumento da censura para evitar a divulgação de notícias com relevância pública e que consubstanciam, no mínimo, incúria de quem conduz a investigação judicial.
Mensagens e Mensageiros: há, nas 13 mil folhas do processo, material infindo para alimentar durante meses sucessivos "casos". Há muito mais cartas anónimas. Há mais dezenas de nomes. Há mais fotografias que foram mostradas aos suspeitos. E, ao que tudo indica, há muitos mais sinais de que foram colocados no processo documentos inúteis, gratuitos ou irrelevantes, cuja divulgação tanto pode lançar lama sobre o nome de muitos inocentes como pode acabar por destruir tudo o que resta de credibilidade à investigação e à acusação. [...]
[N]o caso da liberdade de imprensa o ideal era que nada a regulasse, não existisse lei própria, os profissionais actuassem de acordo com a Constituição e a lei - onde já se estabelece o direito ao bom nome - e os tribunais julgassem em conformidade. Regular mais ou é inútil, pois apenas acrescentará complicação, ou é perigoso, pois pode limitar o exercício de uma das liberdades centrais e inalienáveis em qualquer democracia. Os tribunais e os processos judiciais não são nem podem ser lugares mais fechados ao escrutínio público do que qualquer outra instituição.
(Ainda sobre MENSAGEM/MENSAGEIRO, ler a descoberta de McLuhan por Pacheco Pereira)
Segredo e restrições: Ao DN, o vice-presidente da bancada do PSD Marques Guedes disse que o partido ainda não tem definidas as soluções legislativas a adoptar, mas não exclui rever o segredo de justiça e a lei de liberdade de imprensa.
Entidade reguladora vai apertar controlo: As limitações à liberdade de imprensa preconizadas na quarta-feira pela deputada social democrata Assunção Esteves, presidente da Comissão Parlamentar de Direitos, Liberdades e Garantias, deverão ser concretizadas em dois planos distintos: por um lado, as alterações das regras relativas ao segredo de justiça no Código de Processo Penal (CPP), que a ministra da Justiça se prepara para apresentar na Assembleia da República; por outro, a regulamentação da entidade reguladora da comunicação social, que será criada depois da revisão constitucional extinguir a actual Alta Autoridade para a Comunicação Social. A informação foi dada ao Diário Económico por Guilherme Silva, líder da bancada parlamentar do PSD, que, em vez de "limitações", prefere falar em "responsabilização". A maioria não planeia mexer na Lei de Imprensa.
PS Não Aceita "Centrar as Culpas no Mensageiro": [o líder parlamentar do CDS] Telmo Correia defendeu: "Dentro do conceito de que é preciso clarificar deveres e não só direitos na Constituição, do ponto de vista legislativo, temos de repensar o sistema de regulamentação da comunicação social. Somos contra qualquer atitude censória, mas a liberdade de imprensa tem de ter limites, que são o bom-nome e a dignidade das pessoas."
Dias Loureiro Diz Que o Actual Clima "Só Pode Servir Os Verdadeiros Culpados": "Nós vivemos numa democracia e uma democracia é muito mais do que a sucessão de actos eleitorais e alternância no poder, é um conjunto de costumes e virtudes, uma ética, um código moral. Em nome disso, temos que fazer tudo o que está ao nosso alcance para que a garantia constitucional do direito ao bom nome de cada cidadão seja uma realidade", defendeu.
O social-democrata discorda ainda da necessidade de impor restrições à liberdade de imprensa, defendendo que a lei sobre segredo de justiça tem que ser melhor cumprida.
Director da TVI diz que "liberdade de informação não se discute": Moniz considerou que "de um momento para o outro, parece que se esqueceu que se não tivessem sido os jornalistas o escândalo da Casa Pia nunca seria denunciado" e frisou: "é lastimável assistir a algumas discussões sobre o que alguns consideram violação do segredo de justiça por parte dos jornalistas que em muitas circunstâncias mais não parece ser do que manobras para desviar a atenção do essencial para o acessório. Mesmo reconhecendo que, como qualquer ser humano, um jornalista pode errar, as vantagens de existir uma comunicação social livre numa sociedade democrática e plural, compensam largamente qualquer risco de erro." Para reafirmar: "A liberdade de imprensa é um bem insubstituível."
A nossa liberdade: Coarctar essa liberdade [de informar] é voltar ao 24 de Abril [diz Luís Delgado]
"Mal um nome de um dirigente seu foi envolvido no processo da Casa Pia, o PSD ultrapassou o PS na histeria. E não faz a coisa por menos: mude-se a Constituição e limite-se a liberdade de imprensa ("O Triunfo dos Porcos", Daniel Oliveira, A Capital, 9.1.04)
[T]ambém é verdade que não consta que os Tribunais, a Procuradoria, os escritórios dos advogados, sejam assaltados por jornalistas de mascarilha que devassam processos de noite, à luz de uma lanterna. Por outras palavras: se contam histórias, alguém lhas contou primeiro. (Appio Sottomayor, A Capital, 9.1.04)
Brincar com o fogo: A Comunicação Social injuria, calunia ou mente? Aí estão à mão os tribunais. Um juiz falha? Eis o recurso. Um procurador claudica? Que o Tribunal retire consequências do facto, ou que o Ministério Público resolva o seu problema interno. Um sistema não serve? Erga-se outro.
Não se faça é, como na França de 1793, uma assembleia nacional dita "popular", que ao mesmo tempo que legisla, governa e julga, condena e executa. Daí ao terror, e depois ao despotismo mais ou menos esclarecido, vai um passo.

LEMBRANÇAS
O segredo [de justiça] é violado mais vezes do que seria desejado e também mais vezes se finge que não está a ser violado. Não se pode continuar muito tempo a assistir indiferente a este estado de coisas, é preciso fazer alguma coisa. (Souto Moura, Expresso, 19.1.02)
É óbvio que quando questionados directamente sobre a liberdade de imprensa todos a defendem. Imediatamente se ouve "Liberdade de imprensa? Claro que sim. Censura? Claro que não!! Por favor! Não há coisa pior que a censura!" Mas em seguida afivelam um ar ligeiramente cúmplice e declaram: "Claro que isto não tem nada a ver consigo." E lançam-se numa diatribe contra o mau jornalismo, sendo que na designação de mau jornalismo cabe geralmente o que designam como informação de carácter mais popular e sensacionalista. Esse tal que escreve "porcarias".
É exactamente este conceito sanitário aplicado ao jornalismo que tem servido para legitimar a censura. Vejam por exemplo as declarações de Salazar, em 1937, ao escritor Max Fischer a propósito da censura: "Não sinto, não posso sentir, nenhuma simpatia pela censura. (...) Essa impressão de asfixia que se sente quando um homem, por uma razão qualquer, se lembra de pôr-nos a mão na boca, é horrorosa! Nunca tolerarei que a censura barre o caminho a estudos de ciências, obras de arte, filosofia ou literatura (com excepção, naturalmente, de livros voluntariamente imorais ou pornográficos). (...) As ideias devem poder exprimir-se, sem obstáculos. As ideias e as doutrinas. Mas é preciso não pensar em conceder a mesma licença a certas estreitas discussões pol?ticas e libelos e polémicas, nas quais as injúrias substituem os argumentos. O meu país era e é ainda um doente. É indispensável, para seu repouso, poupá-lo; não se deve gritar inutilmente no quarto de um doente."
Por isso, agora que celebramos o facto de sermos um dos países do mundo onde a imprensa é mais livre, convém frisarmos que a instituição de qualquer censura se faz sempre em nome da erradicação duma qualquer "porcaria". O que muda com o tempo é apenas o conceito de "porcaria". (Helena Matos, Público, 26.10.02)

VITAMEDIAS

Visual radio online: Argentine radio show 'La Cornisa' has established what is believed to be the first photoblog offered by a radio or TV programme.

TECNOSFERA

Philips Unveils First Internet-Ready TV Set featuring a wireless connection to the Internet and personal computers, enabling it to play music, pictures and video from the Web or PCs.

CONTAMINANTES

Imagens de Marte em 1920 ("Scientists, Agreeing Martians Are Super-Race, Believe That Planet May Be Signaling to Us"):

e em 2004:

ECOPOL

The domination effect: Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, the US has sought not just to influence but to control all information, from both friend and foe
As strategic expert Colonel Kenneth Allard noted, the 2003 attack on Iraq "will be remembered as a conflict in which information fully took its place as a weapon of war".
Nor is information dominance something dreamt up by the Bush White House. It is a mainstream US military doctrine that is also embraced in the UK. According to US army intelligence there are already 15 information dominance centres in the US, Kuwait and Baghdad. [...]
The evidence is that targeting of independent media and critics of the US is widening. The Pentagon is reportedly coordinating an "information operations road map", drafted by the Information Operations Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to Captain Gerald Mauer, the road map notes that information operations would be directed against an "adversary".
But when the paper got to the office of the undersecretary of defence for policy, it was changed to say that information operations would attempt to "disrupt, corrupt or usurp" adversarial decision-making. "In other words," notes retired US army colonel Sam Gardiner, "we will even go after friends if they are against what we are doing or want to do."
Bush Grabs New Power for FBI: While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam Hussein's spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the USA Patriot Act.

VITAMEDIAS

Blogs Coming of Age in Spain: Madrid-based blogger Marta Peirano of Elástico says recent world events, including the Prestige oil spill and the Iraq war, sparked growth and a new sense of significance for Spain's blogs this year.
"All of a sudden it became obvious that TV and newspapers weren't providing us with the truth," Peirano says. "We saw things on weblogs that contradicted what we were seeing in conventional media -- digital snapshots and first-person reports posted by independent people, individuals, who'd traveled to the oil spill site to help with cleanup. [...]
"The traditional press in Spain, as in other parts of the world, is in a deep economic crisis," says [journalist Jose Cervera, director of the online edition of Spanish newspaper 20 Minutos]. "By their own numbers, they have more readers than ever before, but they're in bad fiscal shape. But this year, the combination of Internet growth in general and their own internal crisis will make blogs a very, very important part of the mediascape here. This is the year that blogs become a household word in Spain."

CONTAMINANTES

Godwin's law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Godwin's Law is named after Mike Godwin, who was legal counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the early 1990s, when the law was first popularized. Richard Sexton maintains that the law is a formalization of his October 16, 1989 post
You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participents [sic] drags out Hitler and the Nazis.
(via Dan Gillmor)

TECNOSFERA

Password protection in Microsoft Word criticized: Microsoft Word documents that use the software's built-in password protection to avoid unauthorized editing can easily be modified using a relatively simple hack that was recently published on a security Web site.

TECNOSFERA

How the Army used tech to nab Saddam: When American troops conducted a night raid that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, digital technology allowed Army commanders miles away to watch virtually every move.

VITAMEDIAS

Spanish magazine/web site engaged in theft of WSWS material: World Socialist Web Site [WSWS] has demanded that the monthly magazine and web site Amanecer del Nuevo Siglo, published in Madrid, Spain, immediately cease its practice of lifting large extracts from articles posted on the WSWS without authorization or attribution and republishing them as its own.

TECNOSFERA

Blawgs: Marketing Directly to Clients and Prospects with Weblogs

VITAMEDIAS

Domination Fantasies: Does Rupert Murdoch control the media? Does anyone?
Right now, the 50 largest media companies account for little more of total U.S. media revenue than they did in 1986. [...]
Walter Lippmann once wrote, "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." I have never heard a convincing argument that any individual in the United States in 2003 cannot easily and inexpensively have access to a huge variety of news, information, opinion, culture, and entertainment, whether from 10, 50, or 3,000 sources. If that is what passes for media concentration, we should consider ourselves pretty lucky.
Editor’s Note: The Myth of Media Monopoly: As far as major industries go, the media are not particularly concentrated, nor have they become much more so during the last 10 or 20 years.

ECOPOL

Reflecting Absence, o escolhido para memorial WTC

TECNOSFERA

Cybergreen: Bruce Sterling on media, design, fiction, and the future

TECNOSFERA

Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution:
What Individuals Can Do
1. Don't check your email all the time.
2. Don't use "reply to all" when responding to email.
3. Write informative subject lines for your email messages.
4. Create a special email address for personal messages and newsletters.
5. Write short.
6. Avoid IM (instant messaging) unless real-time interaction will truly add value to the communication.
What Companies Can Do
7. Answer common customer questions on your website using clear and concise language.
8. User test your intranet.
9. Don't circulate internal email to all employees; instead put the information on the intranet where people can find it when they need it.
10. Establish a company culture in which it's okay not to respond to email immediately.

ECOPOL

How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech: When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up "free speech zones" or "protest zones," where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.
[Em paralelo:
Bush in 30 seconds: Which ad best tells the truth about George W. Bush?
Second Bush/Hitler Ad Appears at MoveOn.Org]

ZITE

Morphases

ZITE

World's Largest Toothpaste Collection

VITAMEDIAS

Advertising on traditional media sites: Can the traditional business model be translated to the Web?
A content analysis of advertising present on 228 traditional newspaper and television Web sites revealed that 88.6% contained advertising, with an average of 5.03 ads found on the typical news homepage. Newspaper sites had more ads present that were costly to place than did television sites. Still, most major online advertisers were not present on the news sites, suggesting that traditional media outlets may be losing out on major advertiser spending that could help to bring them elusive online profits.

ECOPOL

De Taiwan: Child sexual abuse scandal enrages Portugal: The upcoming trial of the accused is being billed as the first major test of Portugal's notoriously slow legal system since the country returned to democracy in 1974 after nearly five decades of repressive right-wing dictatorship.

VITAMEDIAS

Advertising on traditional media sites: Can the traditional business model be translated to the Web? A content analysis of advertising present on 228 traditional newspaper and television Web sites revealed that 88.6% contained advertising, with an average of 5.03 ads found on the typical news homepage. Newspaper sites had more ads present that were costly to place than did television sites. Still, most major online advertisers were not present on the news sites, suggesting that traditional media outlets may be losing out on major advertiser spending that could help to bring them elusive online profits.