Bom 2009

daqui

Em Nova Iorque

Each year, millions of eyes from all over the world are focused on the sparkling Waterford Crystal Times Square New Year's Eve Ball. At 11:59 p.m., the Ball begins its descent as millions of voices unite to count down the final seconds of the year, and celebrate the beginning of a new year full of hopes, challenges, changes and dreams.

Foto-escolha do New York Times

2008 - The Year in Pictures

Balanço do ano

Janeiro
Só 935?... George W Bush, White House told 935 lies after September 11
Um manancial de imagens: The Library of Congress' photos

À atenção dos bloggers... Tendo em conta o seu passado em questões judiciais, qualquer autor de blogue que seja por "lapso" convidado por advogado alheio a retirá-lo do ar pode ser ressarcido em, pelo menos, 2500 euros.
Não há inocentes? Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2007: The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
1. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)
8. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)


Fevereiro
Um continente de espiados: The most spied upon people in Europe: governments across Europe are under pressure to help their security services fight terrorism and organised crime.
Quem disse isto? I hope that readers will be willing to pay subscriptions or watch ads or things that will keep the high quality and breadth of journalism alive and (make it) even better than it is today
O dever

Qualidade e fa(n)queiros: Se um jornal vende o dobro por oferecer um DVD, não vale afinal ele próprio metade do que aparenta?
Música em mudança: Neil Young Admits Music Can't Change World
O problema não são os jornalistas: What's really wrong with newspapers


Março
Dúvidas: "O Governo, juntamente com o PS, soma, no conjunto dos três blocos informativos, 1439 presenças, número superior à soma da presença dos partidos com e sem representação parlamentar, que é de 1120".
Coisas que é bom saber: a água não é um direito humano essencial... UN rejects water as basic human right
Nesta loja gosta-se da liberdade de expressão

Para quem acha que o jornalismo de papel está em extinção: News International unveils 'biggest printing plant in the world'
Vale o que vale... mas qual é a definição actual para blogue?
A política, hoje, virtual claro:
"Exagerar no anúncio das políticas para obter melhor cobertura mediática"
"Nunca anunciar uma medida que não possa ser anunciada mais duas ou três vezes"
"Abandonar uma política que seja mal recebida pela opinião pública"
"Qualquer partido de oposição devia ter um 'Second Life' para mostrar aos portugueses como faria se fosse Governo"
Uma senhora: Sophie Marceau ne veut pas voir Le Pen


Abril
Realmente, é uma questão de perspectiva: "Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks. Have you seen anyone taking pictures or filming CCTV cameras or making notes about other security arrangements? Has it made you suspicious? If you have seen this or know someone who takes an unusual interest in security measures, we need to know."
Duas visões, o mesmo resultado: Bush administration manipulated TV military analysts & Newspaper that angered Putin closes
É sempre bom saber a quem se entrega o dinheiro: Bancos abusam da ignorância dos clientes
Porque não quero usar o Twitter ou why i deleted my twitter account

Previsões: 10 Businesses Facing Extinction in 10 Years: Newspapers: They won't disappear; they'll be on the internet. We don't recommend startups investing a lot of money into a printing press plant.
Uma boa pergunta, uma resposta assim, assim e um comentário interessante... Why Things Cost $19.95


Maio
O acordo ortográfico português visto de Inglaterra: Portuguese words to go the Brazilian way
Porquê o não a um código? Talvez porque a lei já o contempla... Web users back code for bloggers
À atenção dos bloggers... Bloggers unclear but unconcerned about legal pitfalls
Dicas para evitar a "info overload"
Odores

Uma vitória: A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.


Junho
Uma pergunta: Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Até tu, Darwin?
Jornais na Web e comentários anónimos: Newspapers Face Ugly Side Of Web Future
Coisas difíceis de explicar


Julho
Literacias: Online, R U Really Reading?
Esquire com primeira capa electrónica
Cauda longa criticada: Why Chris Anderson's theory of the digital world might be all wrong.
Pois... Blogging's Dead, Long Live Blogging
Mais de um milhão!! "Terrorist" Watch List Hits One Million Names. Do you feel safer now?
Estado de uma nação

Ricos e pobres: Not only are the very rich getting ever richer, but they are also increasingly cut off from the common experience of those who are obliged to do things differently.


Agosto
Comentários online? Moderar ou não moderar?
Jornalismo com referência: Socorro! Todos os órgãos de comunicação social em portugal estão a ficar iguaizinhos ao Jornal O Crime.
Médio Oriente ao longo dos séculos: Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history?
Ela não é real

Um aviso: When Google Owns You


Setembro
Interesses: Eight stories on Obama linked billionaire Nadhmi Auchi censored from the Guardian, Observer, Telegraph and New Statesman
Publicidade nos blogues: About Half of Bloggers Have Ads on Their Sites
Jornalistas continuam a sê-lo também em blogues?
Magalhães: umas notas
Contra factos é que há argumentos: A ERC está mais ágil: demorou nove meses a entregar os documentos pedidos pelo Expresso e só após pedido dilatório à CADA
A blogosfera, um ano depois: State of the Blogosphere/2008

Serviço público (antes do anúncio do Magalhães): Notícias científicas mais tempo na SIC [...] no primeiro semestre do ano [...]
A SIC veiculou 196 notícias sobre ciência e tecnologia, tendo-lhes dado 6 horas e 57 minutos de espaço nos seus noticiários regulares.
Jornalismo panóptico - uma reflexão: o espaço físico onde as notícias são produzidas influencia o resultado apresentado ao público?
Mais é mais, não é menos... As newspaper sales drop, "cerebral" magazines flourish
Uma pergunta com muitas respostas: When you download music or text from the web, you may be innocently breaking the law.


Outubro
Uma visão da crise

A partir de Abril de 2009, provavelmente: The Monitor Ends Daily Print Edition
E não se pode modificá-los?... 10 reasons why newspapers won't reinvent news
Boa pergunta, com resposta: If we're in the midst of a financial collapse, why aren't executives jumping out of office buildings?
406 546 484,29 euros de serviço público
Ignorância vs. conhecimento: we have not yet reached our maximum ignorance.


Novembro
Coisas que é bom saber: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008
Quem considera normal a videovigilância urbana... não estranhará concerteza a sua evolução.

O negócio da pobreza
Pergunta com resposta e uma exclamação: Who killed the blogosphere? No one did. Its death was natural, and foretold.
Oh, grow up: Blogging is no longer what it was, because it has entered the mainstream


Dezembro
Coisas que é bom saber, lá como cá (ou como a banca se consolida e se agiliza o ajuste directo de empreitadas públicas)
É coisa séria: Publish in Wikipedia or perish
Fotos do ano

Perguntar pelos voos da CIA
Recomendações para os CEOs do jornalismo: My 'Crisis' Advice to Newspaper Company CEOs
Das crises, apoios e colapsos

Coisas que é bom saber, lá como cá (ou como a banca se consolida e se agiliza o ajuste directo de empreitadas públicas)

Was the 'Credit Crunch' a Myth Used to Sell a Trillion-Dollar Scam? Even as the media continue to repeat the claim that credit has frozen up, evidence has emerged suggesting the entire story is wrong. [...]

For the most part, the press has continued to echo Bush's central assertion that there's a "credit crunch" preventing even qualified borrowers -- that's the key point -- from getting loans, and it's now part of the conventional wisdom.

But a number of economists are questionioning the factual basis of the credit crunch narrative. Columnist David Sirota recently looked at those claims and concluded that Americans "had been punk'd" -- that "the major claims about a credit crisis that justified Congress cutting a trillion-dollar blank check to Wall Street were demonstrably false," and the threat of a systemic banking crash was used by the Bush administration to overcome popular resistance to the "bailout."

It's a reasonable conclusion; this is an administration that used the threat of thousands of al-Qaida sleeper cells in the United States to sell Congress on the Patriot Act, the specter of mushroom clouds rising over American cities to push through the Iraq war resolution and the supposedly imminent crash of the Social Security system to push for privatizing Americans' retirement savings. [...]

The credit crunch narrative -- and the justification for creating Paulson's $700 billion TARP honeypot -- is built on three related assertions: 1) banks, fearing that they'll be unable to meet their own financial obligations, aren't lending money to one another; 2) they're also not lending to the public at large -- neither to firms nor individuals; and 3) businesses are further unable to raise money through ordinary channels because investors aren't eager to buy up corporate debt, including commercial paper issued by companies with decent balance sheets.

Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota's research department -- V.V. Chari and Patrick Kehoe of the University of Minnesota, and Northwestern University's Lawrence Christiano -- crunched the Fed's numbers in an examination of these bits of conventional wisdom (PDF), and concluded that all three claims are myths. [...]

Dean Baker, while arguing that "the main story is that people don't have money and therefore want to spend," acknowledged that "some banks are undoubtedly anticipating more write-offs from other loans going bad, so they will hang on to their capital now rather than make new loans." And, as Sirota notes, some of the institutions that are relatively healthy are reportedly holding cash in anticipation of picking up weaker banks on the cheap.


2. Decreto-Lei que estabelece medidas excepcionais de contratação pública, a vigorar em 2009 e 2010, destinado à rápida execução dos projectos de investimento público considerados prioritários

Este diploma vem estabelecer medidas excepcionais de contratação pública por forma a tornar mais ágeis e céleres os procedimentos relativos à celebração de contratos de empreitada de obras públicas e de contratos de locação ou aquisição de bens móveis e de aquisição de serviços relativos a projectos de investimento público considerados prioritários para o relançamento da economia portuguesa, em linha com o plano de relançamento da economia europeia adoptado pelo Conselho Europeu de 11 e 12 de Dezembro de 2008.

Estão abrangidas por este diploma, em particular, pela sua urgência, as medidas constantes dos eixos prioritários da «Iniciativa para o Investimento e o Emprego», adoptada pelo Conselho de Ministros de 13 de Dezembro 2008 (Modernização das escolas; energia sustentável; modernização da infra-estrutura tecnológica – redes banda larga de nova geração; apoio especial à actividade económica, exportações e pequenas e médias empresas; apoio ao emprego).

O regime excepcional agora aprovado vigorará em 2009 e 2010 e, no essencial, prevê:

(i) A possibilidade de ser escolhido o procedimento de ajuste directo, no âmbito de empreitadas de obras públicas, para contratos com valor até 5 150 000 euros e, no âmbito da aquisição ou locação de bens móveis ou da aquisição de serviços, para contratos com valor até 206 000 euros;

(ii) A redução global dos prazos dos procedimentos relativos a concursos limitados por prévia qualificação e a procedimentos de negociação de 103 dias para 41 dias, ou de 96 para 36 dias quando o anúncio seja preparado e enviado por meios electrónicos.

A ler

Complexidades do jornalismo: um caso com The Guardian: News organizations in the Western world, struggling with declining audiences and revenue, are shedding journalists, closing down foreign operations, and cutting costs. But they are also increasingly inhibited by efforts—of government officials and of private corporations—to prevent them from protecting sources or from carrying out difficult investigations.

E a outra também não é grande coisa, Annie Leibovitz

The Worst Photograph Ever Made: This picture as a whole has absolutely zero connection to reality or honest depiction, but is unredeemed by any countervailing expressive or artistic purpose.


Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House: The threat of 9/11 ignored. The threat of Iraq hyped and manipulated. Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Hurricane Katrina. The shredding of civil liberties. The rise of Iran. Global warming. Economic disaster. How did one two-term presidency go so wrong?

Cloud computing

Beautiful image map of cloud services and companies:

Vai uma aposta?...

...de como a redacção multimédia do novo diário do Grupo Lena (Sojormedia) no TagusPark - que, se não houver "desajustamento do projecto à realidade", é para lançar no primeiro semestre de 2009 - terá esta disposição (redacção em estrela com videowall em fundo):

Não estão connosco os que preferem á obediência a sua liberdade de acção?

É por isso que ainda somos mais salazaristas do que democráticos, no fundo da nossa maneira de ser em público.

Fronteira

Mexico–United States border

Coisas de cão

Why on Earth did 17th Century Dutch painter Emanuel de Witte repeatedly depict dogs pissing on columns inside of churches? Dogs pee... of course!

Palavras políticas

The Buzzwords of 2008: Buzzwords are what political wiseguys use to sound all important and knowing in a profession whose prime currency is the illusion of being both. They are like secret passwords for the chattering class, the verbal equivalent of a terrorist fist jab.

Jogos impossíveis (e outros)

Impossible

Grid16

Bubble Spinner

Muitos mais aqui.

À atenção dos serviços secretos: casal tira férias em Setembro, Julho e Novembro

'World's unluckiest tourists' witness three separate terrorist attacks: Jason and Jenny Cairns-Lawrence, from Dudley, West Midlands, were in central Mumbai last month when the Indian city came under siege from Islamic militants.

They were also in New York during September 11 2001 when terrorists flew two passenger planes into the World Trade Centre, bringing down the twin towers and killing almost 3,000 people.

And four years later they were in London on July 7, when terrorists blew up three London Underground trains and a double decker bus, resulting in the deaths of 52 commuters.

Tendências nos videojogos

Video Gaming Trends

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing advertising)

É Natal e...

At bpas we recognise that Christmas is a time when people don’t think about contraception as a priority, but accidents still happen.

Peter Fuss

Billboards

Prenda para todos

What better present for the person who has everything than a poignant reminder that they want for nothing?

É Natal, há quem leve a mal...

'Offensive' Tui billboard takes a hasty flight: A beer billboard that offended many Christian groups in Hamilton is coming down almost as quickly as it went up. [...]

DB Breweries communications manager Gina Williams said that was the point of the billboards - that nobody took Christmas seriously any more.

"Our stance on this from the start was to highlight that Christmas has lost its true meaning," she said.

Coisas que é bom saber

5 Surprising Holiday Health Myths:
Myth 1: Sugar makes kids hyperactive.
Myth 2: Suicides increase over the holidays.
Myth 3: Poinsettias are toxic.
Myth 4: You lose most of your body heat through your head.
Myth 5: Eating at night makes you fat.

Está de volta, limitada

Europeana is testing newly configured hardware. The site is therefore open for you to use but the user experience may not be optimal in this test phase e.g.: the number of users will be limited in peak times.

Desejos de

Festivus Celebrated Today by Families and Seinfeld Fans: Festivus is one of the last gifts that Seinfeld gave to the world at large. In a 1997 Christmas episode of Seinfeld, the term Festivus was coined as a holiday celebrated by the Costanza family. George Constanza and his father Frank introduced Festivus to Seinfeld and his gang, and the rest of American has been joining in since.

Festivus was the brainchild of the O'Keefe family, going back to 1966. Dan O'Keefe created Festivus for his family, a holiday held every December 23 in which Christmas is celebrated in the most non-commercial fashion.

Instead of a tree, Festivus is symbolized by a non-decorative pole. Instead of gifts, Festivus families give each other the "airing of grievances." Instead of a big dinner, Festivus families eat the likes of meat loaf and spaghetti. And instead of family hugs and togetherness, Festivus families compete against each other in "feats of strength."
[imagem daqui]

Coisas que é mau saber

Low-cost female condom popular in Britain: A new latex female condom that women wear and control has received a positive response in Britain, reports an online condom retailer. [...]

"The national government of Portugal has purchased and distributed the VA in their nationwide clinics," Britishcondoms.co.uk reported.
November 18, 2007: The VA w.o.w. Condom Feminine (or VA for short) has been distributed as part of HIV prevention efforts in South Africa since 2004. More recently it has become available in Brazil, Indonesia and through government clinics in Portugal.

Sida: Campanhas são face mais visível da prevenção, mas o impacto é "pequeno" - coordenador: [O Coordenador Nacional para a Infecção VIH/Sida] Henrique Barros também desmente o aumento da infecção em mulheres, conforme alguns médicos e dirigentes associativos têm alertado.

"É mentira. Não há nenhuma evidência de que existam mais mulheres em Portugal infectadas", disse, explicando: "Entre os infectados, a proporção das mulheres aumentou porque diminuiu muito o número de homens infectados, já que 80 por cento dos toxicodependentes infectados eram homens".

"Como diminuiu muito o número de toxicodependentes infectados, é hoje maior a proporção de mulheres infectadas do que há dez anos atrás". "Só que o número absoluto de casos é menor", garantiu. [...]

Em relação ao preservativo, o médico lembrou que a Coordenação duplicou a distribuição de preservativos gratuitos de 2006 para 2008.

Este ano, já foram distribuídos mais de cinco milhões, mais um milhão nos kits da troca de seringas. Foram ainda distribuídos 50 mil preservativos femininos. [negritos meus]

Gananciosos (e o primeiro aprendeu com portugueses?)

The 10 Greediest People of 2008
10: Dwight Schar
9: Patrick Soon-Shiong
8: Richard Baker
7: James Mulva
6: Ralph Roberts
5: Steve Jobs
4: Robert Stevens
3: Larry Ellison
2: John Thain
1: Richard Gilman: Gilman started running Republic Windows and Doors, a modest, four-decade-old plant, in 2006. Layoffs soon followed, and, eventually, only about 240 workers remained from a unionized labor force once over 500 strong.

Those workers, earlier this fall, realized something even more ominous was coming at them. Equipment at the Chicago plant had started vanishing. What the workers didn't know: Republic's "deciders" had set up a new company and bought a nonunion window and door plant in Iowa.

Quero ser combustível de presidente (ou telemóvel com subsídio de almoço...)

Saiba quanto ganham 50 profissões: Os preços médios pagos pelo mercado a meia centenas de funções. Além do salário base, estão quantificadas rubricas da componente variável e benefícios vários. Os dados são da consultora Mercer que inquiriu 270 empresas no mercado português (58% são multinacionais).

Ex.: Presidente
Salário base mensal: 22.702
Subsídio de transporte....
Subsídio de almoço: 1.544
Diuturnidades....
Isenção de horário de trabalho...
Outras componentes fixas: 76.713
Bónus Variável (actual): 204.249
Comissão de vendas (actual)...
Plano de opções...
Plano de acções...
Automóvel: 29.036
Combustível: 10.060
Plano de pensões: 7.941
Plano médico: 1.069
Plano de compra de acções...
Seguro de vida: 5.142
Parqueamento e portagens: 2.105
Cartão de crédito...
Telemóvel: 2.073
Remuneração total anual: 439.343

O próximo porta-voz da Casa Branca

Between Obama and the Press: [Robert] Gibbs, a journeyman campaign flack who had latched onto Barack Obama’s Senate race four years earlier and has been his chief spokesman ever since. [...]

As he prepares to become the White House spokesman, Gibbs is acutely aware that it will be harder to enforce discipline from the seat of government than from the seat of the campaign plane. And sure enough, the incoming administration has endured a leaky few weeks. The names of several cabinet nominees appeared in the media before they were announced or even finalized in some cases.

When I spoke to Obama by phone earlier this month, he said he was not surprised by this. “The transition involves an awful lot of people who don’t actually work for me,” he said.

A culpa foi da televisão?

There’s always a new Luddism whenever there’s change: What the Internet has actually done is not decimate literary reading; that was really a done deal by 1970. What it has done, instead, is brought back reading and writing as a normal activity for a huge group of people.

Many, many more people are reading and writing now as part of their daily experience. But, because the reading and writing has come back without bringing Tolstoy along with it, the enormity of the historical loss to the literary landscape caused by television is now becoming manifested to everybody. And I think as people are surveying the Internet, a lot of what they’re doing is just shooting the messenger. [...]

I’m just so impatient with the argument that the world should be slowed down to help people who aren’t smart enough to understand what’s going on. It’s in part because I grew up in a generation that benefited enormously from not doing that. Right? The baby boomers, when we were young, we had zero, zero patience for the idea that people who are in their fifties in the ’70s and ’80s should somehow be shielded from cultural changes because somehow the stuff that we were doing was upsetting them. So, now it’s our turn and we ought to just suck it up.

Ah, ah, ah...

Local teens claim pranks on county's Speed Cams: As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county's Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.

[S]tudents duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

BTW: Drivers either Homer or Mr Spock: There are two types of travellers characterised by TV's Homer Simpson and Mr Spock, a study suggests. [...]

"Mr Spock is the archetype of logic - he wants to be in possession of all the facts so he can make the best possible decisions when taking a trip," he said.

"Homer Simpson, on the other hand, thinks that making trips is no big deal. As long as things work out he has many other things on his mind besides 'optimising' his travel.

"Research shows that an individual's travel choices are bound up with many factors including their personality, habits, family structure and social networks."

[imagem deste "Invention of the electric eyeglasses as a seeing aid and telecommunications device"]

Prognósticos

The 10 Worst Predictions for 2008: Prognostication is by far the riskiest form of punditry. The 10 commentators and leaders on this list learned that the hard way when their confident predictions about politics, war, the economy, and even the end of humanity itself completely missed the mark.

Publicidade

feelunique.com is offering people the chance to earn 10 pence per wink in return for displaying the company's logo on their eyelid space. People who sign up to star in the campaign will have the feelunique.com logo temporarily transferred onto their eyelid and will be paid on a Pay Per Wink (PPW) basis - up to a total of £100 per model.

A Net está em baixo? É dos cabos!

Is the internet going down? Undersea sub-cables have just broken...: Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.

Realmente, isto dá mau nome à investigação científica

...e aos eventos que albergam a divulgação destes dados. Felizmente, não sucede o mesmo com o "excellent" centro de estudos onde alegadamente "investigam".

O essencial está dito sobre este "trabalho" As vozes femininas na blogosfera: Um olhar sobre a realidade do Minho:
1) Vamos a um grande "supônhamos": será que devemos rever as nossas conclusões, ou, pelo menos, a forma como as comunicamos? Nah, eles não percebem nada sobre o assunto

2) Mais pontos de vista: a amostra de bloggers foi recolhida através dos links e comentários de um único blog, o que introduz aquilo que se chama viés num estudo.

Infelizmente, consegue ser pior: a tal amostra resulta da (negritos meus) "Recolha dos contactos disponibilizados online pelos autores dos 546 comentários que foram feitos em 53 posts sobre o regresso do eléctrico e nos 91 blogues apresentados nas “Avenidas do Minho” (Outubro de 2008)", com posterior "Envio de um questionário para 153 emails (comentadores/bloggers)".

Se a metodologia é duvidosa, os resultados são catastróficos, até porque no primeiro evento, várias outras pessoas levantaram dúvidas sobre como definir o sexo dos respondentes divulgado em blogue versus o seu real sexo com a agregada defesa do anonimato (se bem me lembro, as investigadoras afirmaram ir contemplar o assunto na apresentação pública seguinte).

Enfim, defendem-se agora com o "sexo declarado dos respondentes" mas essa era a difícil parte do trabalho de campo que, com as notas acima, condicionou toda a investigação e o trabalho final. Seja no Minho ou onde quiserem. Arrogantes, não quiseram mudar o rumo da investigação e apresentaram-no em público duas vezes, aparentemente da mesma forma, para "venderem" (o termo é meu) uma ideia das "vozes femininas" na blogosfera. Curiosamente e do que li, foi em blogues assinados por mulheres que surgiram mais críticas ao estudo. Nem isso as faz pensar sobre o (mau) resultado do trabalho?

Boa sorte para todas. Nos seus futuros estudos sobre género e novas tecnologias, este tipo de questões vai recolocar-se e quando forem os pares a analisar o seu trabalho, espero que não sejam tão meigos quanto as críticas nos blogues sobre esta amostra de fraca qualidade do que devia ser investigação científica.

[imagem daqui]

O problema é do perfume

Perfume science: when a man changes his natural body odour it can alter his self-confidence to such an extent that it also changes how attractive women find him.

Para conferir

50 websites you'll wonder how you lived without (Software and tools, Storage and files, Graphics, Research and e-learning, Mobile workers, Miscellaneous)

É coisa séria

Publish in Wikipedia or perish: Anyone submitting to a section of the journal RNA Biology will, in the future, be required to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work. The journal will then peer review the page before publishing it in Wikipedia.

Uma boa ideia

The New York Times is planning to launch a new "Instant Op-Ed" next month that will allow the paper's Web site to post immediate expert viewpoints on breaking news, according to Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal.

De líder a incompetente honesto

Bush and Public Opinion: Reviewing the Bush Years and the Public's Final Verdict: The most frequently mentioned description in the latest survey was "incompetent," just as it was in February 2007 and March 2006. Many of the terms offered by respondents in the December 2008 survey are negative, though the second most frequently mentioned description was honest. Good and honorable also make the list.

Do hard para o soft, em 1998

The key premise of this book [New Rules for the New Economy] is that the principles governing the world of the soft--the world of intangibles, of media, of software, and of services--will soon command the world of the hard--the world of reality, of atoms, of objects, of steel and oil, and the hard work done by the sweat of brows. Iron and lumber will obey the laws of software, automobiles will follow the rules of networks, smokestacks will comply with the decrees of knowledge. If you want to envision where the future of your industry will be, imagine it as a business built entirely around the soft, even if at this point you see it based in the hard.

Radiohead

Make your own Rainbow: Fulfilling one of the initial promises of DVDs—multiple camera angles, remember those?—you can now manipulate 12 different camera angles of a Radiohead concert to create your own music video.

Fotos do ano

The year 2008 in photographs (1, 2 & 3)

Morreu o Garganta Funda do caso Watergate

Mark Felt, Watergate's `Deep Throat,' dies at 95

Chapéus há muitos

Brit Insurance Designs of the Year is the Design Museum’s annual exploration of the most innovative, interesting and forward-looking new work in design of all kinds, from around the world.

The Best/Worst of SkyMall 2008

Interactividade moderada

Lançamento do blogue interactivo no Parlamento Global e SIC Online "no debate quinzenal com o nosso Primeiro Ministro, o Sr. Eng. José Sócrates."

Her master voice? (actualizado): Após alguns comentários publicados notei que um ou outro não tinha sido publicado. Insistia e repetia. Nada. Fazia um comentário sobre outra matéria e entrava. Repetia o anterior e nada. Não era um problema técnico, era mesmo a «moderação» que não permitia publicar certos comentários. Protestei e também não deixaram publicar. A certa altura Anabela Neves escreve que «Infelizmente algumas pessoas estão a usar este blogue de forma fraudulenta». Não era para mim, pois sempre me identifiquei e escrevi dentro das regras da boa educação. Mandei no final um email a protestar e a exigir explicações que também ficou sem resposta. Sinceramente, é ultrajante e uma vergonha que jornalistas tenham por sua iniciativa praticado censura. Sem motivo que não seja não terem apreciado certos comentários. Shame on you!

Participação fracassada no debate quinzenal sobre o estado da nação: Só posso classificar de fracasso a minha tentativa de participação, como cidadão, no debate online disponibilizado pelo blog SIC/Parlamento Global, o qual permitia comentar em directo o debate no Parlamento sobre o Estado da nação e no qual participaram, entre outros, vários jornalistas parlamentares, alguns deputados e pelo menos um ministro.
Fracasso desde logo porque dos 3 comentários que introduzi no sistema, 2 ficaram retidos pela moderadora.

A lista anual dos "melhores" erros e correcções nos media

The Year in Media Errors and Corrections
Trend of the Year: Epic Organizational Failure: In Japan, the Mainichi Daily News, the English website of Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, had to be relaunched thanks to its repeated publishing of false, titillating stories. In England, the Express Newspapers chain published a series of major front page apologies to repent for its wildly inaccurate and damaging reports about a British family. In the United States, the Bulletin, a weekly in Montgomery County, Texas, was revealed to be perhaps the first newspaper to pursue plagiarism as a standard operating procedure.

As opposed to other years when a story (think Sago Mine disaster) dominated accuracy news, the headline for 2008 is that three news organizations knowingly and willfully fabricated, plagiarized or otherwise abdicated their ethics on a regular basis.

Correction of the Year: In yesterday’s column about badminton, I misspelled the name of Guatemalan player Kevin Cordon. I apologize. In my defense, I want to note that in the same column I correctly spelled Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk. So by the time I got to Kevin Cordon, my fingers were exhausted.

Error of the Year: LA Times Shakur Shooting Story: A Los Angeles Times story about a brutal 1994 attack on rap superstar Tupac Shakur was partially based on documents that appear to have been fabricated, the reporter and editor responsible for the story said Wednesday.

Typo of the Year: The Valley News, a newspaper distributed in Vermont and New Hampshire**, committed what many journalists and editors would agree is just about the most embarrassing typo possible: it misspelled its own name on the front page.

Apology of the Year: In an item in Tuesday’s ‘Pandora’, ‘Strange but is it true? The mysterious boycott of Little Britain’, we quoted a New York radio presenter who said that he thought that the claimed West Hollywood Gay Lesbian Alliance protests about Little Britain’s series for the USA were most likely planted by someone’s publicist to generate publicity… ’ We accept that MBC PR, publicists for Little Britain, did not do thiis. We also accept that ‘Little Britain’s new US show is not the ‘most politically incorrect , offensive and obnoxious material ever seen in this country’ and is suitable for broadcast. We apologise to all concerned.

Best Photo Fakery


Best Hoax


[E há muito mais. A ler.]

Fato oficial?

North Korea releases more Kim Jong-il photos to dispel health rumours



The KCNA [Korean Central News Agency of North Korea] also released photos earlier this week of Kim touring a collective farm


Swedish blogger Dennis Josefsson writes in that he's found another photo from February with Kim in the same city wearing the same outfit. Very strange.


Mas há mais, algumas datadas do início de Dezembro (a cor das calças é diferente):


E esta é de 17 de Janeiro de 2007:


Confuso?

O cérebro em exposição (e não se pode trazê-la a Portugal?)

The Beautiful Mind is an online gallery of stunning neuroscience photographs, aiming to demonstrate the beauty within.
Although it's currently an online exhibition, it will be touring Europe in 2009 and aims to promote art-science integration.

Outra aplicação do e-Paper

por Julien Bergignat

Please...

Just give us the money: our would-be bank holding company is a model of family values at work. Sure, we don’t make loans. But show me a bank today that does. You may wish to point out that the two principals involved have no experience running a bank. You would be correct. But what really is worse, having no relevant experience or having an extensive track record of running multi-billion enterprises into the ground? Make a choice between a definite risk and the certainty of abject and costly failure.

[via & via]

Bacalhau congelado no New York Times

A Portuguese Tradition Faces a Frozen Future: During the four decades of António de Oliveira Salazar’s dictatorship, cod was the country’s cheapest source of protein. Cod fishing was subsidized by the state. Cod fishermen were revered as national heroes; cod was the staple for good Catholics on Fridays and holy days.

In the past 15 years, strict quotas limiting cod fishing have driven up prices and made cod a luxury for the working class. Many upscale customers, meanwhile, have turned to supermarkets. Mr. Pereira’s business has declined by 50 percent. The move to frozen cod has only made things worse.

A lista

das listas 2008

+ bónus: 11 Creative Coffee and Tea Mug Designs

Meteorologia: prevê-se uma

chuva de sapatos...


[act.: Meet the Man Who Threw His Shoes at Bush: Muntader al-Zeidi]

Dominó virtual

Drawminos

Jogo

Nano Waris a real time strategy game made with flash by Benoit Freslon.

Ciberjornalismo em três pontos

Vencedores dos Prémios de Ciberjornalismo do I Congresso Internacional de Ciberjornalismo, a partir desta votação.

O ciberjornalismo nacional é pobre? "Paradoxalmente, os ciberjornalistas acreditam que se tira muito partido do meio online, mas os académicos dizem o contrário".

Contrastes: Un paseo por la mejor producción periodística multimedia en internet: La selección, organizada conforme a un criterio absolutamente personal y por tanto discutible, parte de piezas infográficas muy rudimentarias de comienzos de esta década. A pesar de su tosquedad, incluyo esos trabajos para mostrar cuánto han evolucionado los formatos multimedia en apenas diez años.

Descubra as diferenças

Direcção integrada, redacção separada. Quais podem ser os resultados previsíveis? [daqui, via]

Eles andam por aí e a Europa já lidera...

The Rise of the Machines: There are now 1 million industrial robots toiling around the world, and Japan is where they’re the thickest on the ground. It has 295 of these electromechanical marvels for every 10 000 manufacturing workers—a robot density almost 10 times the world average and nearly twice that of Singapore (169), South Korea (164), and Germany (163).

É hoje e já começou

Biggest Full Moon of the Year: The full Moon of Dec. 12th is the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year.

It's no illusion. Some full Moons are genuinely larger than others and this Friday's is a whopper. Why? The Moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other: diagram. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called "apogee" (far away) and "perigee" (nearby). On Dec. 12th, the Moon becomes full a scant 4 hours after reaching perigee, making it 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons we've seen earlier in 2008.

Above: In 2004, Greek amateur astronomer Anthony Ayiomamitis photographed an apogee Moon and a perigee Moon, and set the images side by side to show the difference.

Campanha

Advertising Agency: The Brooklyn Brothers, New York, USA

Nadine Grenier

N-1 Experimental Research: Un message qui s'affiche toutes les 12 heures grâce à plus de 500 horloges.

Alimentos

Welcome to the Food Timeline! Food history presents a fascinating buffet of popular lore and contradictory facts. Some people will tell you it's impossible to express this topic in exact timeline format. They are correct. Most foods we eat are not invented; they evolve.

Perguntar pelos voos da CIA

Question to the Commission by the ALDE group
AUTHOR(S): Ignasi GUARDANS, Sarah LUDFORD, Sophie IN'T VELD, Marco CAPPATO on behalf of the ALDE group

SUBJECT: Alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners

TEXT: Considering the report of 09/08, drafted by the Spanish Ministry of Defence and revealing that at least one USA military flight transporting illegal prisoners overflew Spain after a stopover in Portugal on 30/09/05; and the report by Amnesty International published in 10/08 revealing that at least 90 flights linked to the CIA made stopovers in Spain between 2002 and 2007 and that about 200 people were taken to Guantanamo on flights that took off from US military bases in/overflew Spain; and the Spanish secret document published by El País in 11/08 revealing that the government of Aznar expressely authorized a US request regarding flights over Spain carrying prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantánamo,

Taking into consideration that in August 2008, Polish media reported that a note prepared by military intelligence, confirming the existence of a secret CIA facility, had been seen by government officials in 2006,

Taking into consideration that President Barroso publicly said that he "did not authorize and was not even aware of any secret CIA flights through Portugal when he was prime minister" but that official military data from the Pentagon demonstrate that military flights transporting illegal prisoners (including prisoners whose charges were recently dropped by the Pentagon) did stopover and/or overflew Portugal when Mr. Barroso was Prime Minister,

Taking into consideration the statements by the Portuguese Foreign Minister Luís Amado on 7/10/08 explaining that "it would have been totally irresponsible for the current Portuguese executive to have raised that matter, which put in question the president of the EC, Durão Barroso, who was at the time of the facts Portuguese prime minister",

Will the Commission take any measures regarding these new elements to assert the responsibility of the countries involved and to verify if other Member States also received similar requests?

Does the Commission agree that there is now enough evidence to acknowledge that, even if Member States cooperated in the USA "extraordinary renditions" programme without being aware of its full extent, they should assume their share of responsibility for that cooperation? And does the Commission agree that Members States should offer political asylum to the prisoners who are still detained in Guantánamo but who have not been charged and whom the USA cannot repatriate to their countries of origin?

Date: 3/12/2008

[Le Groupe du l'Alliance des Démocrates et des Libéraux pour l'Europe se compose actuellement de 100 députés européens issus de 22 pays de l'Union. Il est emmené par Graham Watson, un libéral démocrate britannique.]

Direitos tortos

Europe's big brothers: As they prepare to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, European governments must do more than just congratulate themselves on the continued appeal of fundamental freedoms. Our right to respect for private life is at risk from undue interference by state agencies.

Surveillance systems no longer just watch. [...]

It is becoming more and more difficult to identify the line between the individual right to privacy on the one hand and the right of state agents to access highly personal information on the other. Irrationally, governments tend now to view laws that safeguard the collection, storing and sharing of personal information as obstacles to effective counter-terrorism measures.

Judicial and democratic controls are falling by the wayside. [...]

If the human right to privacy is to survive a generation, never mind another 60 years, then European societies must have a serious discussion about surveillance techniques, their limits and how to control them. This will not undermine our security but secure our freedom and democracy.

Jogo

This is IncrediBots, and you'll be building, guiding, jumping, and doing all sorts of wonderful things with your very own robots, spawned from the depths of your creativity, in a wide-open, physics-based playground!

Jogo (?!?)

i made this. you play this. we are enemies. (yes, that is the title)

O que não pode ser copiado - não é o caso...

Better Than Free (Kevin Kelly): "The Internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, and every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times.

[…]

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?"

Despedimentos nos EUA

paper cuts: 2008 total: 14,447+ jobs (Layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers)

[act.: Media Companies Cull 30,000 in Fight for Their Future: The media industries have shed more than 30,000 jobs in 2008, according to an Ad Age analysis of Department of Labor employment statistics and news reports. That's about 3.5% of the total media work force of 858,000. Since the bubble-inflated high-water mark in 2000, media has lost more than 200,000 jobs.

The latest round of restructuring is driven by two concurrent forces: On the one hand, there's a crippling recession that is crushing marketing budgets; on the other hand, there is the ongoing effect of the fragmentation of audiences.]

Tech layoffs: The scorecard: With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. We'll keep updating the chart below as news of company changes comes in. See our complete coverage of how the tech sector is faring here: Tracking the tech downturn.

Para altos e baixos

Ding It's Up is a free service that alerts you via text (SMS), twitter or email when a website goes down or when it comes back up.

Arquivo (pago)

ITN Source is the gateway to over one million hours of iconic footage and creative moving imagery captured over three centuries. From news to drama, celebrity, comedy, music, wildlife, natural history and film, to an inspirational stock footage section and growing at a rate of over 20 hours of digitised content a day, ITN Source is the most diverse commercial archive in the world.

ITN Source represents the footage libraries of Reuters (including historic newsreel collections), ITN, Channel 4, ITV Productions, British Pathe, Fox News and Fox Movietone, Channel 9 News, UTV, Setanta Sports News and other specialist collections [as Asian News International].

Recomendações para os CEOs do jornalismo

My 'Crisis' Advice to Newspaper Company CEOs: 11 Points to Ponder: I, along with a sizable group of new media pundits, have been proposing recommendations for turning around the newspaper industry for some time. The CEOs can plow back through our collective writing and speeches and find at least some of the answers. But knowing how busy all those guys and gals are, this column is the executive summary: my game plan for bringing the newspaper industry out of its steepening nose dive, with ideas of my own mixed in with those of other new media gurus that I endorse.

1. Issue an edict: Digital is first!
2. Consolidate print and online editing functions
3. Print edition: Don't bother chasing young people
4. Print edition: Focus on the core demographic
5. Guide older print loyalists to a life online
6. Reduce the number of print editions
7. Online: Broaden definition of news to include micro-personal
8. Hire a social VP
9. Experiment, fail, experiment more
10. Leverage your remaining staffers, and augment them
11. Consider retirement

Remix.gov

Obama open sources policy web site: US president-elect Barack Obama is easing the copyright restrictions that cover his transition plans, and has placed all material on his Change.gov web site under the Creative Commons 3.0 licence.

The licence will allow users to copy, distribute and transmit all material from the site, as well as to adapt and 'remix' the information, provided that the site is sourced for all material used. ["Except where otherwise noted"...]




Open Government: the Obama team has modified the copyright notice on change.gov to embrace the intellectual property licensing of Creative Communs, allowing bloggers and others to freely use it.

A group of internet visionaries, lead by Lawrence Lessig, launched today a letter making the case for a looser online copyright regime. [...] “To further support President Obama’s commitment to change, and to help make it tangible, we offer three “open transition principles” to guide the transition in its use of the Internet to produce the very best in open government.”

The “Principles for an Open Transition” are three:

1. No Legal Barrier to Sharing
2. No Technological Barrier to Sharing
3. Free competition



[Obrigado, Diogo]

Um avanço para o jornalismo, diz ele

German newspaper calls in the citizen photographers: Germany's Bild newspaper plans to partner with a supermarket chain to distribute $89 cameras that readers can use to take pictures and shoot videos for use in the publication's print and web editions.

"We can't cover everything," Michael Paustian, an editor at the paper, tells AP. "We think it is an advance for journalism."

Obama liberal?

10 Ways the Corporate Media Tried to Make You Think Obama Was a Liberal: Cherrypicking information, ignoring facts, generating fake outrage -- the media did their best to create a caricature of Obama.

Das crises, apoios e colapsos

O Governo anunciou um Plano de Apoio ao sector automóvel, constituído por nove grandes medidas orçadas em 900 milhões de euros, que deverão estar em prática em Janeiro, no final de uma reunião entre o Primeiro-Ministro e os Ministros da Economia e da Inovação e do Trabalho e Solidariedade Social e representantes dos fabricantes de automóveis e de componentes para automóveis, em 3 de Dezembro. As medidas visam «salvar empregos e melhorar a competitividade de um sector que é vital para a economia do País», afirmou José Sócrates. Manuel Pinho disse que este «é um programa muito grande, mas que se justifica num sector que emprega cerca de 50 mil pessoas em Portugal e que é responsável por cerca de 15% das nossas exportações».

La tercera revolución industrial llama a la puerta: Los fabricantes europeos, norteamericanos y chinos del automóvil están pidiendo a sus respectivos gobiernos que acudan en su ayuda con una inyección masiva de fondos públicos y advierten de que, si las ayudas no son inmediatas, podrían verse abocados a la quiebra. Mientras hay quienes apoyan que se les preste ayuda porque temen un revés catastrófico para la economía, otros sostienen que habría que abandonar a las empresas a su suerte y que sobrevivan o desaparezcan en el mercado libre sin intervención alguna. Hay otra forma de abordar el problema, pero sería necesario un cambio radical en la manera de analizar la naturaleza y la significación de lo que está ocurriendo y de lo que debería hacerse al respecto.
[Jeremy Rifkin no El Mundo de 1 de Dezembro]

[act.: Should the US taxpayer support green cars for rich people? The US taxpayer is in a pickle. It's being asked to hand out $400 million to support Tesla Motors, a pioneering startup working on electric cars as part of a programme to support fuel-efficient cars.

That might sound like a no-brainer, since electric cars are widely acknowledged as a way to cut harmful air pollution in cities and greenhouse emissions.

But here's the catch: Tesla has so far only shipped about 80 cars, and they were all $109,000 convertibles. These aren't cars for the masses, and they are some way from making any kind of dent in US air pollution or greenhouse emissions.]

The Five Stages Of Collapse: Even though the various stages of collapse drive each other in a variety of ways, I think that it makes sense to keep them apart conceptually. This is because their effects on our daily life are quite different. Whatever constructive ways we may find of dodging these effects are also going to be different. Lastly, some stages of collapse seem unavoidable, while others may be avoided if we put up enough of a fight.

Emprego (para jornalistas residentes nos EUA)

Submit your entry "I am the future of journalism because..." and put yourself in the running for a job offer with Publish2, plus a $1,000 signing bonus. [...]

Journalists of all ages, skill sets, and backgrounds are encouraged to enter. Tell us, your peers, and industry leaders why you are the future of journalism.

Deadline For Entry: December 30, 2008

Prémio FIL em Guadalajara, México

Lobo Antunes y la naturalidad: Este hombre que baja a desayunar o que deambula en mangas de camisa por las veredas de Guadalajara representa lo que quiere ser esta feria, más que ninguna otra cosa. El hombre es Antonio Lobo Antunes, ha recibido el Premio FIL a la obra de toda una vida, y explicó en un discurso improvisado y muy hermoso que los maestros de su vida, y de su escritura, fueron un loco, una enferma terminal y un niño moribundo.

Please...

Simpsonize Me

Atenção esta noite (se as nuvens ajudarem)

Venus And Jupiter Coming Monday Night: On Monday, Jupiter and Venus will brighten up the sky so, that the full globe of the moon will be visible. The normally darkened portion of a crescent moon will glow a bluish-gray hue intertwined between the sunlit crescent and similarly lit sky. Leonardo da Vinci first recognized what is known as “the old moon in the young moon’s arms.”

Those living in parts of Western Europe will see a more spectacular sight than the view in North America. All except southern Portugal will see a sky that looks like a bright jewel on the moon. Venus will actually disappear behind the dark part of the moon during evening twilight or just before the sun goes down.

The last time such a visual treat took place was in London on October 7, 1961. Another Venus sighting won’t happen again for the United Kingdom until January 10, 2032.

[Já se notou ontem...]