24 junho 2005

TECNOSFERA

Portugal tem um supercomputador, ocupa a 461ª posição na lista dps "500 mais" e é da Humantel.


(Ele que se esforce para aumentar a produtividade porque este blogue vai estar desligado na próxima semana.)

CONTAMINANTES

Spectacular Conjunction: This weekend Mercury, Venus and Saturn are going to crowd together in a patch of sky no bigger than your thumb. Astronomers call it a "conjunction" and it's going to be spectacular.

TECNOSFERA

As famosas listas de Verão para dar descanso aos jornalistas: 50 Coolest Websites 2005

23 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands. Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.

Microsoft Recruiting Paid Bloggers to write and edit Web sites about five broad topics: fashion/food/style, music, sports, technology, and television.

TECNOSFERA

How the Web changes your reading habits: Computers and the Internet are changing the way people read. Thus far, search engines and hyperlinks, those underlined words or phrases that when clicked take you to a new Web page, have turned the online literary voyage into a kind of U-pick island-hop. Far more is in store.

VITAMEDIAS

Citizen Journalist Signup: As an upgraded Bayosphere member you'll be able to post one-off stories or maintain an ongoing weblog, or blog. Soon you'll be able to post images and work on collaborative projects as well.
1. For contributions beyond comments and forum posts, we ask that you use your real name and provide some contact information for our internal use.
2. We ask that you agree to take a pledge, to do citizen journalism in an honorable way.

TECNOSFERA

MIT Weblog Survey: This is a general social survey of weblog authors being conducted at the MIT Media Laboratory.

22 junho 2005

CULTURAS IN VITRO

100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time
1 - Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. GONE WITH THE WIND, 1939
2 - I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. THE GODFATHER, 1972
3 - You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. ON THE WATERFRONT, 1954
4 - Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. THE WIZARD OF OZ, 1939
5 - Here's looking at you, kid. CASABLANCA, 1942
6 - Go ahead, make my day. SUDDEN IMPACT, 1983
7 - All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. SUNSET BLVD., 1950
8 - May the Force be with you. STAR WARS, 1977
9 - Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night. ALL ABOUT EVE, 1950
10 - You talking to me? TAXI DRIVER, 1976

CONTAMINANTES

The Assault on Scientific Freedom: Academic freedom and scientific inquiry have come under sustained assault since September 11, 2001. Spurred by misguided and often disingenuous security concerns, the Bush Administration has sought to impose growing restrictions on the free flow of scientific information, unreasonable barriers to the use of scientific materials, and increased monitoring of and restrictions on foreign university students.

TECNOSFERA

Join Civilities -- and let's construct media together! I'm looking for a team to help me continue to keep Civilities relevant and moving forward. It's been exhausting for a year-plus doing this all myself, and I need some assistance so I can concentrate more on the software parts. I'm especially looking for people who aren't bloggers, that is, with have no prejudice about what online personal publishing should be. Here's what the work here involves:
1. Surf and react [...]
2. Research [...]
3. Evaluate new tools [...]
4. Write [...]
5. Edit [...]
6. Code

VITAMEDIAS

Study Bolsters Blog-Related PR Practices: The Euro RSCG/Columbia study shows that more than 51 percent of journalists use blogs regularly, and 28 percent rely on them to help in their day-to-day reporting duties. By contrast, a recent Pew Internet and American Life Project survey showed that just 11 percent of the U.S. population as a whole reads blogs. [...]
Still, despite their reliance on blogs for reporting, only 1 percent of journalists found blogs credible, the study found.

TECNOSFERA

They Got (Video) Game; N.B.A. Finals Can Wait: Millions of young American men seem to be asking the same question. Since 2000, television broadcast ratings for almost all major sports have fallen among male viewers between 12 and 34. Even Nascar, whose ratings have generally been hailed by the industry as healthy, has suffered a modest decline, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Over the same period, sales of sports video games in the United States have risen by about 34 percent, to more than $1.2 billion last year from slightly less than $900 million in 2000, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. Young men are also the core market for video games.
For the lords of sports, the attitude toward the video game revolution seems to vacillate between appreciation for the licensing revenue that video games can bring (the National Football League, for instance, reaped an estimated $300 million from a recent five-year licensing deal with Electronic Arts, the leading video game company) and concern about whether these games are forcing the cash cow of television onto an unwelcome diet.

ZITE

The Old Negro Space Program: The Shocking-but-false Story of America's Blackstronauts

21 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

I, Reporter: Inspiring, guiding, and educating citizen journalists and the news organizations that work with them.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Did George Lucas and Steven Spielberg Ruin the Movies? 16 straight weekends in which ticket sales have declined in comparison to last year's box office. As I write this, Variety is reporting the likelihood of a 17th weekly decline, given the somewhat soft opening for Batman Begins, although the losing streak could snap when the studios issue their actual box-office tallies tomorrow.
That can't be blamed on Spielberg or Lucas, even though both directors seem to have lost their way in recent years as innovating entertainers.

TECNOSFERA

Be A More Productive Blogger 2:
* Tell a story [...]
* Break longer posts up into several smaller posts [...]
* Lists, lists, lists. [...]
* Make good use of your drafts. [...]
* Quote liberally and be sure to tip. [...]
* Respond to feedback on your blog. [...]
* Don?t obsess over your stats. [...]
* Learn from blogging. [...]
* Use your blog to sort out problems. [...]
* Think of your blog as a knowledge management repository. [...]
* Use your blog to test ideas. [...]

TECNOSFERA

11 pontos n'Um Guia Ético e Técnico para o Blogouve-se.

TECNOSFERA

Extra! Extra!
O ABRUPTO tablóide...

VITAMEDIAS

Advertising and media redraw the lines: Advertising has gotten dirtier - or, at least, less predictable - as marketers vie for the attention of fickle consumers who are constantly being courted by rival brands in ways that had not even been dreamed up a few years ago. The content of ads has changed, and so have the ways in which the messages are delivered.
As the technological revolution whipped through the media industries, leaving "digital convergence" and fragmented audiences in its wake, the advertising industry first went into denial. [...]
But now the advertising business is responding by attempting to revolutionize the way in which it works.
One of the more visible signs of this, to people in the industry at least, is the emphasis on "integrated" advertising. Like the Scruffs campaign, this approach employs different media - television and print, for instance, but also the Internet, mobile phones or DVD giveaways - under one overriding idea.

20 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Hugo Silva, do lisbonlab, lançou o desafio para o meritório BlogReporters, "um blog no qual qualquer licenciado em comunicação social, jornalismo ou jornalista desempregado à procura de emprego poderá publicar gratuitamente as suas notícias, reportagens, entrevistas ou fotografias [negrito meu]. Um espaço no qual estes indivíduos possam demonstrar a sua qualidade e valor, que poderá ser reconhecido por um editor de um órgão de comunicação social tradicional, que lhes proporcione uma nova experiência profissional."
Não pude responder directamente ao Hugo (que não conheço pessoalmente mas disponibiliza no lisbonlab trabalhos seus e excelentes links externos) sobre o jornalismo participativo. As minhas desculpas.
No dia seguinte ao meu desafio, também ele - por via da presença no debate que refere no seu texto - propôs a criação deste tipo de blogue.
Distancio-me deste projecto - ao qual desejo sucesso - porque acho que não deve estar feito como bolsa de emprego para quem está na comunicação social. Acredito que pode e deve ser feito por quem deseja participar, conhecendo antecipadamente regras jornalísticas, mas não necessitando de ser jornalista, licenciado ou no desemprego.
Nos comentários ao meu texto, um Pedro que não eu escreve "Ok, não é bem a mesma coisa (não é sequer "bem a mesma coisa") mas e a Wikipédia? Pode não ser jornalismo, mas mostra que há vontade e voluntarismo para esta espécie de projectos colectivos".
Acredito que pode ser um complemento a um projecto colaborativo jornalístico mas saliento a necessidade de controlo editorial nos conteúdos para não se acabar com uma "circopédia".
Por isso referi ser necessário que as regras devem ser estabelecidas e discutidas "entre os interessados" (previamente, saliento agora) a aderir a um projecto destes.

17 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

A ler: A responsabilidade de jornalistas e cientistas: Abra-se ao calhar um qualquer jornal português, ou espanhol, ou sueco, nas páginas que dedicam à ciência e teremos, quase de certeza, uma de três situações (ou as três em conjunto): a notícia do jornal é sobre um artigo publicado nesse dia numa revista científica; a notícia é sobre medicina; a notícia é positiva. [...]
Qual foi a última vez que leu uma notícia sobre um cientista que fez uma fraude ou cometeu uma falta ética? E um político? E um homem do futebol? As diferenças de tratamento são óbvias.

ECOPOL

Derivações Ambientais XXVIII: O Tribunal Constitucional (TC) divulgou ontem as habituais coimas aplicadas ao diversos partidos políticos por irregularidades nas contas, neste caso no exercício de 2002. Os valores são para todos os gostos; dos partidos com assento parlamentar temos o seguinte: PS com 60.900 euros; CDS/PP com 59.160 euros; PSD com 52.200 euros; BE com 20.880 euros; PCP com 13.920 euros.
Aquilo que mais me choca é a normalidade com que este assunto é tratado.
[E o enorme atraso na divulgação das coimas, já agora...]

VITAMEDIAS

Blogs lauded in 'freedom awards' por RSF:
Asia: Screenshot (Malaysia, published in English)
Joint winner Africa and Middle East: Shared Pains (Afghanistan, Farsi)
Joint winner Africa and Middle East: Al Jinane (Morocco, French)
Europe: ICT lex (Italy, Italian)
Americas: Press Think (US, English)
Iran: Mojtaba Saminejad (Iran, Farsi)
International: Netzpolitik (Germany, German)

VITAMEDIAS

Dos e nos media:
An Onslaught Of Hidden Ads: Toyota Motor Corp. has asked at least three major magazine companies to explore product integration -- that's product placement to you and me -- of its cars into magazine editorial pages. [...]
Toyota's notions aren't universally welcomed. "We'll sell our mothers, but this doesn't work," says a mystified magazine executive who attended one presentation and, fearing a major advertiser's wrath, insisted on anonymity. "I can't sell you an article. I don't even know how to price it."
[Mas e se soubesse?]

Editors ignore this wake-up call at their peril: More than 7,000 retail newsagents have closed in the past ten years and up to 100 post offices shut down last year. [...]
Editors can discuss what to do about declining circulations until the cows come home but strategies to boost sales won?t work if shops that sell newspapers can?t survive.

Digital Magazines Boost Sales of Print Editions: Cost is the biggest driver behind most digital magazine efforts, according to [Peter Meirs of Time Inc.]. The price of paper has increased by double-digit rates in recent years and postage costs have also gone up. In addition, an ever-accelerating news cycle makes the 48-hour delivery time for most magazines a growing competitive disadvantage.
Environmental concerns also play a part.

One-Fifth of Web Users Prefer Online News: The first-time study from Nielsen//NetRatings found that 21 percent of those Web users now primarily use online versions of newspapers, while 72 percent still read print editions.

Old news and a new contender: The BBC now has 525 sites. It spends £15m ($27m) a year on its news website and another £51m on others ranging from society and culture to science, nature and entertainment. But behind the websites are the vast newsgathering and programme-making resources, including over 5,000 journalists, funded by its annual £2.8 billion public subsidy. [...]
It is the success of the BBC's news website that most troubles newspapers. Its audience has increased from 1.6m unique weekly users in 2000 to 7.8m in 2005; and its content has a breadth and depth that newspapers struggle to match.
Newspapers need to build up their online businesses because their offline businesses are flagging. Total newspaper readership has fallen by about 30% since 1990 and readers are getting older as young people increasingly get their news from other sources?principally the internet. In 1990, 38% of newspaper readers were under 35. By 2002, the figure had dropped to 31%.

DESAFIO

Tenho assistido quase calado (mas não mudo) à emergência do jornalismo corporativo, baseado na Net e na cooperação por este meio, elogiado por muitos blogues em Portugal sem que os mesmos façam algo por mudar as coisas nos medias actuais ou tentem criar alternativas.
Os blogues querem ser força de contrapoder e consideram que o podem ser. Ainda bem. O contraditório na nossa sociedade tem sido pequeno ou nulo e, por isso, quantas mais vozes públicas, melhor.
Mas acho admirável a quantidade praticamente inexistente desse contrapoder (não, o Abrupto não conta, nem o Causa Nossa, nem semelhantes, porque repetem ou complexificam ou desmistificam o que escrevem nos media tradicionais. Estão desqualificados). E os outros?
Acho igualmente admirável - mas não de admirar - que as supostas vozes contraditórias e contrafactuais dos blogues não se juntem e prefiram ter blogues pessoais. São o retrato da nossa sociedade: comentam no café mas não se organizam na freguesia; discordam em casa mas deixam a câmara municipal ser tomada por forças políticas de que discordam. Porque lhes facilita a crítica fácil, claro.
Por isso, já não fico fascinado quando leio José Francisco Viegas (JFV) sobre Ah, gajas do meu país e concordo com o Manuel Pinto sobre a potencial nota de "disclosure" sobre a Rititi não efectuada por JFV.
Tal como concordo que também os "bloggers" deveriam disponibilizar esse tipo de nota sobre as suas ligações comerciais, familiares, políticas ou de quaisquer interesses nos seus textos (afinal de contas, é só JFV que ganha por levar Rititi ao seu programa?... Não há ligações de amizade e comerciais noutros blogues?)
Eis quando senão surge o AgoraVox - le journal citoyen - Des Mass Media aux Media des Masses. Eh pá! Isto está feito como exemplo para o portuga que gosta de partilhar e construir e opinar sobre a sua sociedade, em conjunto mas não só.
O modelo de recolha, tratamento e crítica num blogue é simples, como se vê neste Blog Process.
Mas quantos estão dispostos a alinhar na escrita colectiva sob critérios jornalísticos (a opinião não conta)?
Quem quer lançar um projecto não-lucrativo de jornalismo?
Vá lá, está aberto o processo, claro e sem nuances: quem está disposto a participar num projecto de jornalismo participativo, baseado na Net, sem pruridos ideológicos, atento aos "innuendos" que devem ser discutidos entre os interessados? Está aberta a porta: quem quer entrar?
Não acredito que os autores dos blogues queiram alinhar neste tipo de projecto, sejam de direita ou de esquerda, do norte ou do sul. Porque cada um defende a sua terra, o seu blogue, o seu território. Não é mau mas não é colectivo e não é público. E não venham depois defender o poder dos blogues.

15 junho 2005

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Propriété intellectuelle: que dois-je savoir du droit d'auteur sur Internet?

VITAMEDIAS

Steal This Prose: A good student plagiarized five stories and forged a letter
The story of how it all happened provides a glimpse of how two of the nation's most competitive newspapers can work together if need be -- and more important, how the increasing pressure on youngsters to do an adult job can damage newspapers' reputations and the kids themselves.

14 junho 2005

ECOPOL

Aguilera em Guantanamo? Segundo este Inside the Interrogation of Detainee 063, sim. Mas convém ler este The Music of War: The function of music in war has always been twofold: as a means of communication and as a psychological weapon.

TECNOSFERA

Para dar uma noção visual "do que mais se fala nas notícias" em Portugal, eis o buzz index (via JornalismoPortoNet)

TECNOSFERA

Live 8 Tickets Create Text Message Blitz: Next month's Live 8 concert in London has already notched an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.
There were more than 2 million text messages sent to Live 8 organizers to bid for pairs of tickets to the concert, organizers said Monday, easily becoming the largest text-message lottery in history.

VITAMEDIAS

Gallup: Public Confidence in Newspapers, TV News Falls to All-Time Low vs. Nielsen Says System Shows More TV Watching vs. American Public Trust in Bloggers Growing, Media Declining

CULTURAS IN VITRO

E esta? Master plan: the theft last year of Edvard Munch's The Scream may have been part of an elaborate criminal plot

VITAMEDIAS

The new kids on the blog: the rapid evolution of weblogs ? or blogs ? as movie marketing tools.
Costing almost nothing to maintain, the vast majority of blogs are mental clearinghouses for their authors, lo-fi Web confessionals or bully pulpits that vary from current events to niche pastimes to sex. Directors' blogs, by contrast, are slickly engineered to virally market their movies ? to stoke fan ardor.
Some observers say this approach allows studios to put a spin on moviemaking ? and, by playing to fan interest, head off potential controversies. Movie marketers say the sites allow blogger-directors to reach out to fans in an up-close-and-personal way.

Modellers measure 'word of mouth' for films: César Hidalgo, now a graduate student in physics at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and his colleagues, decided to study the 'word of mouth' effect in the film world simply because reviews often have a huge impact on audience numbers and there are copious data on ticket sales.

VITAMEDIAS

Acabou (ou começou?) este The New Gatekeepers: To read the headlines, or the bloglines, one might get the sense that the bloggers have arrived on the scene to challenge the ?gatekeepers? of the big media. This is an essay in eight parts to examine this theme.
I will argue here that gatekeepers are inherently needed by the architecture of the blogosphere-- as it has evolved, since 2001, into a public consciousness. This architecture has been developed out of certain values, and those values are the ones espoused by those same thought leaders. That is not to say that there are other architecture, values, or leaders present; merely that this is the dominant form for the moment.

VITAMEDIAS

Interview with Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks: if you are looking to do [a blog] as a business, unless you already have something that you're selling -- and this is just a complement -- then don't do it. This is not a way to make money. [...]
But if you are in corporate America, if you are a public figure, it's a way for you to communicate about what you're doing in your organization as if you're a columnist in a major, you know, media publication.

VITAMEDIAS

Do LA Times To Our Readers: Watch next week for the introduction of "wikitorials" ? an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials.

TECNOSFERA

The european blogosphere (com a portuguese blogosphere)

TECNOSFERA

Acrylic [ou "Expression"?]: an innovative illustration, painting and graphics tool that provides exciting creative capabilities for designers working in print, web, video, and interactive media.

TECNOSFERA

Report on the Meeting of Experts on Digital Preservation: Metadata Specifications

TECNOSFERA

É hoje: 2nd Annual International Weblogger's Day

11 junho 2005

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Culture in the Age of Blogging [sobre "artblogs"]

CULTURAS IN VITRO

[Para quem gostou da banda...] Oh Yes, It?s Devo: An Interview with Jerry Casale: An Interview with Jerry Casale

10 junho 2005

ECOPOL

Dear Mr. President,
On behalf of myself and the people of Azerbaijan, I extend to Your Excellency and the people of your country our heartfelt congratulations on the occasion of the national holiday of the republic, Portugal Day.
I hope friendly relations and cooperation between Azerbaijan and Portugal will be steadily enhancing in line with interests of the two nations.
Please, accept my best wishes for peace and prosperity of the friendly people of Portugal.
Sincerely,
Ilham Aliyev
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan
Baku, June 1, 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Deep Throat's Crimes: Mark Felt, Constitution-shredder: After Mark Felt outed himself as the legendary ?Deep Throat? in the Watergate case last week, there was a media rush to canonize the FBI?s former Number Two man, and politicians proposed he be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in all this gush to make Felt a hero, there has been little or no mention of Felt?s prime role in COINTELPRO -- the most gigantic domestic political spying and disruption operation ever in American history, illegally conducted by the FBI.
Felt, in fact, was indicted and convicted in federal court in 1980 of directing nine illegal break-ins, aimed at domestic political targets, when he was boss of the COINTELPRO operation. Felt thus became the highest ranking FBI official to be convicted of criminal charges Hoover_nixon_1 since J. Edgar Hoover became head of the Bureau in 1924.

VITAMEDIAS

O novo jornalismo?
John Battelle, Wired Co-Founder Nears Launch of Blog Ad Network: He said he expects to complete an angel round of financing this week, and hopes to have the network up and running by this fall. The network, dubbed FM Publishing (with FM standing for Federated Media), will launch with between 10 and 20 technology-related blogs, including Boing Boing, as well as Battelle's own SearchBlog. Battelle said he also is considering including blogs that cover culture for the network.

VITAMEDIAS

The Web's 'Contagious Media': Because people pass along links to this stuff so quickly, it spreads through cyberspace like a disease, and now sites like this have earned an appropriate name -- contagious media [...]
"You start it. You tell your friends. You tell some bloggers. And you see how it spreads," said Jonah Peretti.
Even though most of the sites are fake, or funny, or both, Peretti believes contagious media cannot be ignored.
"It's reaching millions of people," he said. "It's an important way that ideas spread."

CONTAMINANTES

Xplora: new website for Science Education

CULTURAS IN VITRO

The Battle of "Blogumentary": Two independent producers who are each creating a documentary on blogs have tangled over use of the word "blogumentary."

VITAMEDIAS

Fora de prazo mas lembrou-me Portugal...
Freelancers set for protest day on 7 June: Branches of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) have also organised social events and workshops to help freelancers address working issues.
Abuse of copyright and low pay are two of the biggest problems faced by freelancers.
Some national newspapers have not increased freelance pay for ten years, claims Tim Dawson, chair of the NUJ's freelance council.
"The idea that we should work for these ridiculous rates of pay is unacceptable. Something needs to be done to take hold of our working lives," he said.

08 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

The young stir up a news storm: Perhaps the man in the street will have to acquire some of the judgment and critical thinking of the journalist to assess where best to find stories, what is reliable and what isn?t: in short, we will have to become ?active citizen readers? in this new era of citizens? media.

07 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

CMT Pays Man 100K Salary to Blog: CNN Money reports that Country Music Television has signed Chris Nelson to a one-year $100,000 deal to watch reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" on the cable channel and write blog postings for the network's Web site.

ECOPOL

Já começou a guerra da água (curioso é que Portugal peça dinheiro mas não a água...): Spain and Portugal in water fight: Portugal has accused Spain of stealing its water as the two Iberian countries battle a drought that has seriously reduced levels in rivers flowing across their border.
Portugal has demanded ?6m (£4m) in compensation from Spain after levels of water in the Douro river have fallen below limits established in a bilateral agreement. The source of many of Portugal's big rivers start in Spain. [...]
Spanish officials have admitted that they have probably broken the 1998 agreement intended to stop bickering over water.
"It is probable that we will have to pay," Jaime Palop, Spain's director general of water, admitted to El País newspaper yesterday.

VITAMEDIAS

Small is the new big: BoingBoing (four people) has a readership growing a hundred times faster than the New Yorker (hundreds of people). [...]
Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.
Don?t wait. Get small. Think big.

TECNOSFERA

Google Secret Lab, Prelude: It's one of the best kept secrets of Google. It's a mystery on Webmasterworld. Also in Europe (France) they don't know what to expect from that odd URL http://eval.google.com. Click it and you get ...nothing. The site reveals itself only if you have the proper login and if you use a network known by Google. Residues of Eval.google are found on the web, but the full content of the mystery site has never been published before. Here it is: the real story about Eval.Google. They use... humans!

06 junho 2005

TECNOSFERA

Technorati set to break 11 million blogs tracked

VITAMEDIAS

Newspapers Are F***ed: ?Look at newspaper circulation numbers. They?re all on a steady decline. There?s going to be a lot of confusion and pain in the interim as this transition from paper to electronic happens.?
Andersen is a fan of blogs, but he says they need to be reinvented if they want to achieve clout in journalism. ?The speed of blogs is great, but there are complex arguments and thoughts that can?t be compressed into 150 words. I am eager for the next moment in the evolution of blogs to happen, where there are people actually doing reportorial journalism in the blog form.?
He envisions a hybrid blog, whereby a journalist is paid to search out stories and blog about them, incorporating both traditional reporting and opinion.

VITAMEDIAS

Media: A house redivided: the very same fee-happy Wall Street investment bankers that once advocated mergers are now convincing the likes of Viacom chair-CEO Sumner Redstone and Time WarnerTime Warner chair-CEO Richard Parsons they can "unlock value" and boost their stock value by spinning off certain divisions.

ECOPOL

Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind: The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Call them the hyper-rich.

VITAMEDIAS

Nixon and the FBI: The White House Tapes:
- Oval Office Recordings Show Nixon's Support for FBI "House Cleaning" After Hoover's Death
- Bureaucratic Tensions Set Stage for Felt's "Deep Throat" Leaks

A Long Shadow: Understanding Deep Throat: Why a source took on a president then, and how Nixon's fall shapes us even now.

ECOPOL

Federal Court Orders Government to Turn Over Videos and Photos Showing Detainee Abuse: "These images may be ugly and shocking, but they depict how the torture was more than the actions of a few rogue soldiers," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "The American public deserves to know what is being done in our name. Perhaps after these and other photos are forced into the light of day, the government will at long last appoint an outside special counsel to investigate the torture and abuse of detainees."

TECNOSFERA

EPIC, redux: The EPIC video (in which "Googlezon" takes over the media world in the twentyteens) has been updated to include recent developments

TECNOSFERA

The 100 Best Products of 2005 [e ainda só vamos em Junho...]:
1. Mozilla Firefox - Web Browser
2. Google Gmail - Web Mail
3. Apple Mac OS X Version 10.4 (Tiger) - Operating System
4. Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router and Notebook Network Card - Wireless Networking
5. Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW - 24-Inch Wide-Screen LCD
6. Alienware Aurora 5500 - Performance PC
7. Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive - Portable Hard Drive
8. Skype - VoIP Service
9. Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT - Digital SLR Camera
10. PalmOne Treo 650 - PDA Phone

03 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat' por Bob Woodward

VITAMEDIAS

Os blogs no marketing: Numa análise para os primeiros quatro meses de 2005, o Netpanel indica que 398 mil portugueses com 15 e mais anos consultaram blogs. Este número representa 28.3% dos indivíduos destas idades que no período em análise navegaram na internet.
Neste período, foram visitadas mais de 27 mil páginas de blogs, uma média de 69 por utilizador. Mais de 386 mil horas foram dedicadas a estes sites, uma média de 58 minutos por utilizador.
Os meses de Fevereiro e de Março foram os que mais bloggers atraíram, quando 204 e 205 mil utilizadores únicos, respectivamente, visitaram este tipo de sites.
Na análise do perfil dos visitantes de blogs, vemos que 70.4% são homens, 71.1% têm entre 15 e 34 anos, 44.5% pertencem às classes sociais alta e média alta e 49.2% residem nas regiões da Grande Lisboa e do Grande Porto.

02 junho 2005

VITAMEDIAS

All the News Fit to Upload: On May 24, Levine, a former reporter for the Hartford Advocate, debuted his new website, ctnewsjunkie.com. It's one of the new breed of what are being called "hyperlocal" news sites: one-man (or one-woman) operations that focus on one particular town or neighborhood and offer real news gathering, not just snarky opinions.

VITAMEDIAS

TV's Future Is Here, but It Needs Work: A company called Akimbo has a tantalizing idea. What if you had a TiVo-like set-top box, complete with a hard drive that could hold 200 hours of video - but instead of recording live broadcasts, you could tap into an enormous library of shows, stored on the Internet, and watch them whenever you liked?
It's a great concept. [...]
Unfortunately, Akimbo can offer only what the networks and cable channels are willing to contribute. And these days, just hearing the phrase "Internet downloads" generally sends television executives into paranoid fits.

VITAMEDIAS

Internet the new growth engine for newspapers: NYT publisher: The Internet could provide newspapers with a new engine for growth with greater reach and better speed rather than threaten the traditional print industry, says Arthur Sulzberger, chairman and publisher of the New York Times.
"Some mention the crisis of newspapers saying young readers no longer read print newspapers in the Internet era, but it's not that the Internet is eroding the newspaper market but that newspapers have gained a new medium to deliver information," Sulzberger said

Taking Back the Web: It?s part of a new aggressive push by publishers to re-establish themselves as authorities on Internet business. The perception is that this space has been defined by companies like Yahoo and Google. Now it?s time for magazine publishers to serve as the new thought leaders, particularly as the models of companies like Google are starting to resemble a standard ad sales model.

TECNOSFERA

O papel dos blogues na comunicação organizacional (via Indústrias Culturais)

Yahoo! Employee Blog Guidelines: The official version and my own advice (by Jeremy Zawodny)

TECNOSFERA

La planète blog: Personne ne doute que, passé l'effet de mode, le phénomène des blogs ait de l'avenir. Et le plus probable, c'est qu'il va se banaliser, tout en devenant « la colonne vertébrale de notre petite vie numérique ».

VITAMEDIAS

"I'm the Guy They Called Deep Throat": W. Mark Felt, 91 years old and formerly second-in-command at the F.B.I., says that he is the confidential Watergate source who assisted Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein?and helped bring down President Richard Nixon

In the Prelude to Publication, Intrigue Worthy of Deep Throat: On Wednesday, word came that the family of Mr. Felt, the ailing, 91-year-old former No. 2 official of the F.B.I., had sought payment in vain for his story after failing to reach a collaborative agreement with Mr. Woodward - not only from Vanity Fair, but also from People magazine and HarperCollins Books. They are apparently still determined to claim their share of the story that helped make Mr. Woodward a famous millionaire.

Deep Background: The Best-Kept Secret in Washington Nearly Stayed That Way
Vanity Fair's big scoop almost didn't happen. It started with a cold call two years ago from John D. O'Connor, a prominent lawyer in the San Francisco Bay area, to the magazine's editor, Graydon Carter. O'Connor, according to David Friend, an editor at the magazine, said he had a client "who is Deep Throat, and he wants to come out in the pages of Vanity Fair." [...]
The problem for Vanity Fair, Friend said, was that O'Connor wanted the magazine to pay Felt and Felt's family for the story -- a condition the magazine would not agree to.
O'Connor -- who had become acquainted with the Felt family through Felt's grandson, a Stanford classmate of O'Connor's daughter -- decided instead to publish Felt's account as a book. But after a year of trying to find a publisher, Friend said, O'Connor was back at Vanity Fair's doorstep.
Therein began a long and secretive process to render Felt's story into print. Although O'Connor was the lead writer, the magazine supplemented his work with research and fact-checking. It corroborated Felt's account by getting his daughter, his son, his daughter-in-law and a former companion to confirm that he had previously revealed his identity as Deep Throat.
About 15 Vanity Fair editors and staff people were eventually assigned to the story, which was code-named WIG (a corruption of "Watergate"). All of those involved signed confidentiality agreements that bound them not to reveal Felt's identity if the piece didn't meet publication standards.

Why Did Bob Woodward Lunch With Mark Felt in 1999?
Was it to ask if he could unmask Deep Throat? [2002]

Deep Throat: An Institutional Analysis: I cannot reveal who Deep Throat was, because I do not know. I do know, however, the part of the government in which Deep Throat worked, and I can speculate with some conviction about what Deep Throat's institutional motivations may have been. [...]
There has been considerable speculation that Deep Throat never existed, that he must have been either a complete fiction or a composite of several people. My memory of those early months of Watergate is otherwise: that there was a specific individual, from the FBI, and Woodward had special access to him. [1992]

Deep Throat (Watergate) & W. Mark Felt from Wikipedia

"Deep Throat" Uncovered [o engano]

TECNOSFERA

Online User Experience Studyidentified 22 experiences that describe and define of how people interact with and relate to digital media, and determined how each of those specific experiences impact site usage. [...]
The study revealed that the experience "Entertains and absorbs me" is the top driver of site usage.