31 Março 2009
Vidas ciborgues
La Vida Cyborg!: Connectivity Can Compromise Dignity
Robot Madness: Will Cyborgs Compromise Privacy?
You Pay, Computer Prays For You
30 Março 2009
Eco-herético?
The Civil Heretic: How did Freeman Dyson, the world-renowned scientist and public intellectual, wind up opposing those who care most about global warming?
29 Março 2009
Jogo
PANDEMIC 2: If you've ever had a desire to create a disease to destroy mankind, please use this game to fulfil that desire rather than using the real world!
28 Março 2009
Exposição a ecrãs
8 Hours a Day Spent on Screens, Study Finds: In a world with grocery store television screens, digitally delivered movie libraries and cellphone video clips, the average American is exposed to 61 minutes of TV ads and promotions a day. [...]
In fact, adults are exposed to screens — TVs, cellphones, even G.P.S. devices — for about 8.5 hours on any given day, according to a study released by the Council for Research Excellence on Thursday. TV remains the dominant medium for media consumption and advertising, the study found. The data suggests that computer usage has supplanted radio as the second most common media activity. (Print ranks fourth.) [...]
Researchers at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, who conducted the study for the council, say it is the largest observational look at media usage ever conducted. Rather than relying on what people remembered watching, researchers captured the actions in real time by shadowing 350 subjects — most of whom were former members of the Nielsen television ratings panel — and recording each person’s behavior in 10-second increments. The researchers say they recorded 952 days of behavior. People under 18 were not included in the study.
27 Março 2009
26 Março 2009
Negativo
Why We Have Difficulty Recognizing Faces In Photo Negatives: a large part of the answer might lie in the brain's reliance on a certain kind of image feature. [via]
Liberdade de imprensa
How free is the press in your country?
(1 = totally restricted, 7 = completely free)
1 Denmark
2 Sweden
3 Netherlands
4 Germany
5 Norway
6 Finland
7 Switzerland
8 Israel
9 New Zealand
10 Canada
31 Portugal
Source: World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Survey 2007, 2008
A ler, uma dúzia de textos
Rosen's Flying Seminar In The Future of News: a kind of flying seminar on the future of news, presented in real time.
A falta que um jornal faz
Fine, they'll just publish the newspaper themselves: Though people sometimes complained about the Carbondale Valley Journal, its demise came as a blow after 34 years as the mountain town's only newspaper.
Residents felt its loss in the dearth of information about local life: births, deaths, proposed developments, high school sports scores.
A friend of Rebecca Young's died and there was no obituary. [...]
So Young [who founded the newspaper in 1975] and six other residents started a new newspaper, the Sopris Sun, run as a nonprofit and staffed mostly by volunteers. [...]
"Isn't it crazy? Starting a newspaper now?" asked editor and reporter Trina Ortega, a former Valley Journal employee who has become the first paid member of the staff. [...]
"There was a void. Every town should have a park, a library and a newspaper."
Hyper-local News In The Post-Newspaper Era: Decentralized news-gathering processes can incorporate small contributions from a huge number of people who aren't primarily in the news business. You don't need to be a professional reporter to write a blog post every couple of weeks about your local city council meeting. Nor do you need to be a professional editor to mark your favorite items in Google Reader. Yet if millions of people each contribute small amounts of time to this kind of decentralized information-gathering, they can collectively do much of the work that used to be done by professional reporters and editors.
25 Março 2009
Bruce Sterling sobre "mind bombs", livros, ficção científica e obsolescência dos media
Bruce Sterling - Prophet and loss: "I am a cult author; I don't write for the vast hamburger-eating, seething masses. I try to plant mind bombs - do the most damage" [...]
"I am not sure I am going to be allowed to do it. American publishing is in distress. The book stores are going, the big centralised publishers are very heavily indebted and they are small sections of the centralised American media apparatus that have lost social credibility." [...]
"If you read a piece of science fiction that is very accurate about future developments it makes you unhappy. When you read these books you wonder why nothing was done about these problems if you were able to predict them.
"It gives you a sense of helplessness." [...]
"I am not an industrialist. But it's up to me to talk about the loss. The future is obsolescence in reverse. And obsolescence is a big part of maturity.
"To understand that things happen you have to understand that things vanish. A lot of it deserves to be gone forever, but not all of it. I am especially worried that things disappear in thoughtless fashion."
Media sem pilotos
Media Companies Falling Behind in Digital Space: A new study from IBM reveals a "growing rift" between advertisers, consumers and content owners, as media companies "struggle to keep pace with" new demands from tech-savvy viewers and marketers.
The study, which surveyed 2,800 consumers in six continents, as well as ad industry professionals worldwide, states that "media companies are falling behind in meeting the growing expectations of digital savvy consumers and the advertisers looking to reach them," and points to a "growing rift between advertisers and content owners, media distributors and agencies."
IBM is calling on content owners to "fundamentally" change the way they deliver information to audiences.
Every Airman is a Communicator: The Air Force Public Affairs Agency just published their New Media and The Air Force brochure, a guide to provide professionals with the knowledge they need to work online.
It’s really an outstanding thorough guide, and a demonstration of how far mainstream America has come with social media. In the introduction the guide says, “If the Air Force does not tell it’s own story, someone else will.”
Qualidade
New Leadership Qualities You Need In This New World: It's no longer good enough to have great creative ideas without a grounding in the processes that bring those ideas to market efficiently. Leaders will have to have an instinct and appetite for innovation along with the skill and curiosity to develop the end-to-end capability that delivers efficiently. Neither will do on its own.
Here are four steps for turning your own personal leadership ability toward today's reality:
First, honestly check out what's missing from your personal leadership portfolio. [...]
Second, take an inventory of the people around you. [..]
Third, check out your ability to productively engage in debate and conflict. [...]
Fourth, don't go it alone.
24 Março 2009
Estratégia de Lisboa
Novo Ciclo 2008 - 2010 · Consolidar as Reformas
Domínio 1 Qualidade das Finanças e dos Serviços Públicos
1.1– Qualidade das Finanças Públicas
1.2– Modernização da Administração Pública
1.3– Melhoria dos Procedimentos Administrativos
Domínio 2 Um Ambiente Favorável para os Negócios, em Especial para as PME
2.1 – Dinamização de Investimento Estrurante
2.2 – Internacionalização
2.3 – Acesso ao Financiamento
2.4 – Promoção do Empreendedorismo
2.5 – Promoção de Boas Prácticas/Recrutamento do Mérito das PME
2.6 – Reforço da Competitividade do Turismo
2.7 – Plano Estratégico Nacional para a Pesca
2.8 – Dinamização do Mercado, Desenvolvimento do Mercado Interno e Regulação
Domínio 3 Melhor Sistema de Inovação e mais I&D
3.1 – Mais I&D
3.2 – Inovação
3.3 – Criatividade e Língua e Cultura Portuguesas
Domínio 4 Combater as Alterações Climáticas, Apostar nas Energias Renováveis e na Eficiência Energética
4.1 – Eficiência Energética
4.2 – Energias Alternativas
Domínio 5 Mais Mobilidade Positiva através das Qualificações, do Emprego e da Coesão Social
5.1 – Investir na Educação e Formação e Melhorar as Qualificações da População Portuguesa
5.2 – Promover a Criação de Emprego, Prevenir e Combater o Desemprego
5.3 – Promover o equilíbrio entre Flexibilidade e Segurança no mercado de trabalho e a melhoria das condições de trabalho
5.4 – Reforçar a Coesão Social
Domínio 6 Promover um Território Inteligente
6.1 – Driver Portugal logístico
6.2 – Política de Cidades
6.3 – Ordenamento do Território: infra-estruturas de Informação
6.4 – Requalificação e Valorização de Recursos Endógenos
6.5 – Água e Saneamento de Águas Residuais
6.6 – Infra-estrutura Digital – Banda Larga
6.7 – Rede Escolar
Siftables
Siftables are cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. They act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them - piling, grouping, sorting - to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provides a new platform on which to implement tangible, visual and mobile applications. [via]
Inovação e regiões (OCDE, 2009)
OECD Regions at a Glance 2009 is organized around four major themes and a special focus on regional innovation:
Part 1 - Focus on regional innovation
Part 2 - Regions as Actors of National Growth
Part 3 - Making the Best of Local Assets
Part 4 - Key drivers of regional growth
Part 5 - Competing on the Basis of Regional Well-being
23 Março 2009
A boa da videovigilância
Vidéosurveillance : un rapport biaisé: Le titre s’étale en “une” du Figaro: “Deux fois moins d’agressions grâce à la vidéosurveillance“. La preuve? Une étude (non publiée) du Ministère de l’Intérieur - qui s’apprête à lancer (ce vendredi) une campagne de communication sur la “vidéoprotection“ -, reposant sur des chiffres (biaisés) révélés par un journaliste* qui ne donne la parole qu’aux seuls promoteurs de la vidéosurveillance…
* On notera enfin que Jean-Marc Leclerc, le journaliste auteur de cet article, est par ailleurs membre du groupe de contrôle des fichiers policiers, une émanation du ministère de l’Intérieur présidée par Alain Bauer, qui préside également la Commission nationale de la vidéo-surveillance, chargée d’”animer” le plan de Michèle Alliot Marie.
Directiva de Retenção de Dados "inválida" na Alemanha
Administrative Court: Data retention is "invalid": As the first German court, the Administrative Court of Wiesbaden has found the blanket recording of the entire population's telephone, mobile phone, e-mail and Internet usage (known as data retention) disproportionate. [...]
(D)ata retention violates the fundamental right to privacy. It is not necessary in a democratic society. The individual does not provoke the interference but can be intimidated by the risks of abuse and the feeling of being under surveillance [...] The directive [on data retention] does not respect the principle of proportionality guaranteed in Article 8 ECHR, which is why it is invalid.
O caso do Wall Street Journal online
The case for charging to read WSJ.com: insights into why and how the Journal came to be the most prominent pay site on the web (by Bill Grueskin, former managing editor of WSJ.Com) [...]
I turned to my co-instructor, Peter Kann, former CEO of Dow Jones and the person ultimately responsible for the paid strategy.
“I made the site paid because I was ignorant, “ Kann told the class. “I didn’t know any better. I just thought people should pay for content.”
24 horas de edição
O ciclo diário da comunicação: A recolha de dados foi efectuada ao longo dos últimos meses. Desde Abril de 2008, foram analisados 622.293 micro-posts, ou tweets, de 3.552 contas no Twitter; desde Novembro desse ano fiz a contabilidade a 53.690 posts publicados por 520 blogs e a 74,776 notícias publicadas por 12 órgãos, incluindo televisão, rádio, imprensa diária, não diária e edição web.
Isto tem piada?
Recognising Eight Funny Patterns: According to evolutionary theorist Alastair Clarke there are only eight types of joke, eight patterns of humour that exist across all cultures regardless of creed, race, or personal taste, from the earliest souk to the Broadway stage. [...]
The patterns are positive repetition, division, completion, translation, applicative and qualitative recontextualization, opposition and scale.
“The eight patterns divide into two main categories,” explains Clarke, “The first four are patterns of fidelity, by which we recognize the repetition of units within the same context, and the second four are patterns of magnitude, by which we recognize the same unit repeated in multiple contexts.”
22 Março 2009
21 Março 2009
3º aniversário do twttr
Twitter Turns Three: When Twitter was hatched, it was called “twttr”. Jack Dorsey, coding up the very first working version of the site, sent the first recorded message at 12:50pm PDT:
just setting up my twttr
How Twitter Was Born: The first version of @Jack’s idea was entirely web-based. It was created on March 21st, 2006. My first substantive message is #38:
oh this is going to be addictive
20 Março 2009
A terceira vaga
The end of the free lunch—again: “IN RECENT years, consumers have become used to feasting on online freebies of all sorts: news, share quotes, music, e-mail and even speedy internet access. These days, however, dotcoms are not making news with yet more free offerings, but with lay-offs—and with announcements that they are to start charging for their services.” These words appeared in The Economist in April 2001, but they’re just as applicable today. [...]
Then it happened all over again, starting in 2004 with the listing of Google on the stockmarket, which inflated a new “Web 2.0” bubble. [...]
Now reality is reasserting itself once more, with familiar results. The number of companies that can be sustained by revenues from internet advertising turns out to be much smaller than many people thought, and Silicon Valley seems to be entering another “nuclear winter” (see article).
A ERC, a TVI, Moniz e Manuela
Queixas à ERC acusam a TVI de comportamento persecutório a Sócrates
Moniz reage à ERC: Recuso-me a acreditar que, independentemente do pecado político original que está na origem da formação da Entidade Reguladora, os seus membros alguma vez aceitassem ser cúmplices do amordaçamento da Comunicação social ou servos do Poder. Se assim fosse a situação não seria grave: seria gravíssima! E reclamaria um combate tremendo sem quartel.
ERC E MANUELA OU A TROVA DO RESPEITINHO: O comunicado da ERC que recebi há bocado e transcrevo para além de ser inédito só pode ser entendido como uma forma de pressão e isso é muito grave quando vem do órgão que pretende regular a actividade da comunicação social em Portugal.
ERC E MANUELA OU A TROVA DO RESPEITINHO - 2: É a primeira vez que a ERC faz um comunicado a dizer que recebeu umas queixas e que vai apreciar as ditas queixas. O que a ERC sempre fez, foi dar, e só, as conclusões e recomendações, se for caso disso, depois de as apreciar. Todos os jornais, todos, têm queixas. Imaginem o Telejornal que tem anos de existência...
[act.: Reguladores dos media desmentem Moura Guedes]
19 Março 2009
Design de páginas Twitter
25 of the Best Designed Twitter Homepages
A Small Gallery of Colorful Profiles from the Twittersphere (+ Things to Consider When Choosing a Color Theme)
Twitter homepage design competition closes. Great examples!
Um crime geneticamente perfeito
Twins Suspected in Spectacular Jewelry Heist Set Free: German police say at least one of the identical twin brothers Hassan and Abbas O. may have perpetrated a recent multimillion euro jewelry heist in Berlin. But because of their indistinguishable DNA, neither can be individually linked to the crime. Both were set free on Wednesday.
Fina subtileza, difícil equilíbrio
Sobre "O Relatório do Comité Europeu para a Prevenção da Tortura", escreve o MAI:
O CPT recomenda que seja instalado um sistema de vídeo vigilância nas áreas públicas, nas celas e nas salas para interrogação, com o objectivo de monitorizar a forma como os agentes de execução da lei tratam as pessoas detidas.Parabéns ao MAI pela postura internacional e demonstrada preocupação pela privacidade. Leia-se agora este "Uns vigiam, outros ficam com o número de série"...
Tal como Portugal já informou o CPT durante a reunião final que teve lugar em Lisboa a 25 de Janeiro de 2008, a instalação de câmaras de vídeo vigilância nos locais de detenção das forças e serviços de segurança é uma questão complexa, tendo em atenção o quadro legal português em matéria de protecção de dados e o princípio geral de que os sistemas de vídeo vigilância envolvem restrições de direitos liberdades e garantias. Nesta matéria aplica-se, na falta de legislação específica sobre vídeo vigilância (existe lei específica para a actividade de segurança privada ou para a organização de competições desportivas), a Lei n.º 67/98, de 26 de Outubro, sobre protecção de dados pessoais.
Assim sendo, as autoridades portuguesas irão ponderar e avaliar a possibilidade de introdução de instrumentos de vídeo vigilância, tendo em conta o necessário e adequado equilíbrio entre as questões de privacidade e outras medidas que envolvam o tratamento de dados pessoais. Qualquer iniciativa neste sentido envolve necessariamente parecer e consulta da Comissão Nacional de Protecção de Dados que deverá apreciar as condições de legitimidade e definir as regras e condições em que estas câmaras poderiam ser utilizadas.
Propostas simples
A Simple Model for Online Journalism: As a four-year veteran of a journalism-driven local online media start-up, I believe there’s a very viable business formula that’s actually quite simple, and here today: take advantage of new tools and techniques to cover the news creatively and efficiently; sell sophisticated digital advertising in a sophisticated fashion; keep the Web content free, and charge a high price for content and interaction that are delivered in-person via conferences and events. And don’t expect instant results.
I’m not saying this model will be a “replacement” for newspapers, or provide stable, high-paying jobs for all the journalists who once worked at newspapers. Nor do I claim that it will, by itself, support all the forms of journalism that we want and need. But I do think the potential of this approach has been radically underestimated.
Paying for News: A Mega-Merger Thought Experiment: What would happen if some top English language journalism organizations simply merged and started charging for their breaking news and commentary about policy, economics and and other national/international topics. That is, what if they were to combine for critical mass and keep most of their journalism off the public Internet for a few days after publication but then make the archives freely available?
Twitter gera tráfego para sites de notícias
Although Twitter is a news source for many, it is also a source of traffic for news websites. During February, 9.6% of Twitter’s downstream traffic went to News and Media websites, and 41% of that went to the News and Media – Print sub-category, which is dominated by the newspaper sites.
18 Março 2009
Modelos de Webnegócio
Monetizing your Web App: Business Model Options, via Taxonomy of Business Models: A fairly detailed taxonomy of the existing business models for web sites.
The Tweetbook
Well, someone had to do it, and I think I’m the first. I’ve archived my first two years of twittering to a hardback book.
Realmente...
Canada's science minister won't say he believes in evolution: This is disturbing to say the least:
Canada's science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won't say if he believes in evolution.
“I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
Proposta
How surfing the web can save the environment: Next time a new small-scale ecological problem grows into a larger one, the internet may give us a chance to stop it from blowing out of proportion. So says Tim Daw from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. He proposes that software be designed to crawl the web and hunt for early warning signs of ecological change, to give us the chance to react before it is too late.
The concept has been proven to work for human health, says Daw. For example a web crawler called GPHIN picked up the beginnings of the 2002 SARS outbreak three months before the World Health Organisation confirmed it.
FLEPia
Um comentário para 584 queixas
Cyclist decapitation article 2008's most complained about paper story: A Times article about decapitating cyclists was the most complained about last year to industry watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission, receiving a record number of complaints about British newspapers and magazines.
The PCC, publishing its annual report today, said it received 4,698 complaints overall last year, a rise of 8% on 2007.
The most complained about article was a comment piece by Matthew Parris, published on 27 December, 2007, in the Times and headlined "What's smug and deserves to be decapitated?".
It attracted 584 complaints, mostly from cycling enthusiasts objecting to the suggestion that piano wire be strung across country lanes to decapitate cyclists as a punishment for littering the countryside, the PCC said.
Discussão interessante: a quem pertence a água da chuva?
Who owns Colorado's rainwater? Environmentalists and others like to gather it in containers for use in drier times. But state law says it belongs to those who bought the rights to waterways.
Felicity is back!
The Other Porn Addiction: Why are ordinary women exposing themselves online?
The Porn Identity: In February and March 2009 authors Stacey May Fowles and Hal Niedzviecki corresponded via email about the broader implications of ordinary women revealing themselves and their lives on the internet, and how the moral and cultural consequences of online pornography, community, and diminished privacy create murky waters indeed.
Revista personalizada
Made-to-order magazine lets readers choose: Time Inc. is experimenting with a customized magazine that combines reader-selected sections from eight publications as it tries to mimic in printed form the personalized news feeds that have become popular on the Internet. [...]
The magazine is free, but the print edition is limited to the first 31,000 respondents, while an online version is available for another 200,000.
Sign-ups are available immediately at http://www.timeinc.com/mine, with the first issue to be shipped in the mail in early April, and then once every two weeks.
Ilusões tácteis
A história repete-se: ascensão e queda
vinyl, cassettes, cds, and Digital: This graph shows the relative rise and decline of past music mediums, vinyl, cassettes, and CDs, and the more recent rise of digital music sales.
[act.: More Americans buy music online, fewer buy CDs]
17 Março 2009
Homem, tímido e cómico
Personality tests reveal the flip side of comedy: professional comedians are shyer than most other people, a new study suggests. [...]
The vast majority of all professional comedians are men, he notes, adding that both women and men tend to laugh more at male speakers than female. Some researchers speculate that this is because humour is an adaptive trait that helps women assess the fitness of a potential mate.
E após o diagnóstico?
'We all know the problems the media, especially broadcasters and newspapers are facing, but what is the solution?' And this writer has responded basically saying, 'If I had the answers to that question then I would be a very rich media consultant today, but I don’t, so I’m not!' [...]
The CEO of a major newspaper group said a few months ago in a private meeting that it is legacy agreements that are destroying newspapers today. If newspapers were to fold today, this executive said, and all those union agreements and vendor agreements were made null and void, new newspapers could arise within a couple of weeks with employee contracts and vendor contracts that were affordable in today’s environment and those new newspapers could well be profitable from day 1.
Um cavalheiro, uma época
If our entire era could be described in a single picture, it would be this one (from Fairfield County Look via TPM): the current head of AIG Financial Products (the division that lost all the money) wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt at a cocktail party.
Bizarrias 2.0
Government 2.0 Meets Catch 22: “We have a Facebook page,” said one official of the Department of Homeland Security. “But we don’t allow people to look at Facebook in the office. So we have to go home to use it. I find this bizarre.” (via)
Coisas que é bom saber
BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, MARCH 16TH 2009 (CUOPM) – Portugal’s new non-resident Ambassador to the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis has presented his credentials to Governor General His Excellency Dr. Sir Cuthbert Sebastian, GCMG, OBE, MD, CM.
His Excellency João Caetano da Silva will also meet with the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Agrément accepting the appointment of Mr. da Silva to serve as non-resident Ambassador of Portugal to St. Kitts and Nevis was granted in 2007.
Mitos e publicidade
Major Research Report Expected To Explode TV Viewing Myths: Findings could have an impact on ad spending patterns
A group of the biggest names in TV research are set to explode some commonly held myths about how consumers watch TV. Their findings about what’s really going on in the world of video consumption will be unveiled next week. The survey is expected to reveal such things as which age groups do the most media multi-tasking; whether younger viewers are really shifting away from traditional TV and how much commercial time viewers are exposed to.
Cinema na net
IMDb's vision: Offer streaming for every title: IMDb founder Col Needham said the massively popular movie database has set as its major goal for the future to add one-button streaming for all of the 1.3 million titles it indexes.
Estatísticas
16 Março 2009
O cabo das audiências (e retorno)
Audiences Turn to Cable and WebPercentage Change in Audience, 2007 to 2008, Across Media
Change in Ad Spending by MediumAudience: In a big news year, most media continued to see audiences shrink.
Only two platforms clearly grew: the Internet, where the gains seemed more structural, and cable, where they were more event-specific.
The data also suggest a clear trend in the changing nature of how Americans now learn about the world around them. People are relying more heavily — both during peak moments and in general — on platforms that can deliver news when audiences want it rather than at appointed times, a sign of a growing “on demand” news culture. People increasingly want the news they want when they want it. (in The State of the News Media 2009 on the health and status of American journalism)
Pub para ganhar ou perder clientes?
Fitness First "Bus Stop"
Publicly humiliate her into joining your gym: Here's another entry for our public-shaming file: this bus-stop ad for a health club in the Netherlands. It has a scale in the seat and displays the sitter's weight for all to see. We're sure Fitness First is expecting a huge spike in membership from this, but the effect is ruined the moment two people share the seat. That and, you know, trying to win people's business by humiliating them.
Melhoramentos
Old Growth Media And The Future Of News:
Will this system be perfect? Of course not. But I think we have every reason to believe that it will be an improvement on the paradigm that we’ve been living with for the past century.
Objectivos e taxistas
Why setting goals can backfire: But a few management scholars are now looking deeper into the effects of goals, and finding that goals have a dangerous side. Individuals, governments, and companies like GM show ample ability to hurt themselves by setting and blindly following goals, even those that seem to make sense at the time. [...]
Even the scarcity of cabs on rainy days, some argue, illustrates the ways that goals can blind people to their own best interests. [...]
One seminal economics study even argued that the difficulty of finding a cab on a rainy day can be blamed on the personal goals of cabbies. The 1997 paper found that cab drivers tend to have a set amount of money they aim to make every day. When it's raining they hit that target faster, since more people want cabs, so the cabbies quit earlier in the day. This narrow focus on a goal hurts everybody in the system - it shrinks the taxi supply just when demand is highest, leaving more people standing on the curb getting wet, and it hurts the cabbies themselves, who miss a chance to maximize their income on their most lucrative days.
The new criticism of goals has elicited a spirited defense from several scholars of human motivation.
Cuidado com os erros
Democracy Denied, 1905-1915: Intellectuals and the Fate of Democracy, by Charles Kurzman: In the decade before World War I, a wave of democratic revolutions swept the globe, consuming more than a quarter of the world’s population. Revolution transformed Russia, Iran, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Mexico, and China. In each case, a pro-democracy movement unseated a long-standing autocracy with startling speed. The nascent democratic regime held elections, convened parliament, and allowed freedom of the press and freedom of association. But the new governments failed in many instances to uphold the rights and freedoms that they proclaimed. Coups d’état soon undermined the democratic experiments.
Intellectuals at the Gates: Some revolutions fail when the enlightened misread the national mood.
In short, the revolutions of 1905–1915 failed because intellectuals overestimated popular democratic support and underestimated the challenges that democracy presented. Kurzman writes acerbically about these intellectuals, repeatedly suggesting that such liberal values as a free press and universal education were just parochial interests of the class that writes and teaches for a living. [...] The intellectuals of 1905–1915 were, Kurzman amply shows, deluded about their peoples’ readiness for democracy. They were ahead of their time, a misfortune not just their own, but their countries’.
Oops, we did it again - Why we make mistakes: A new book says people have design faults that inevitably lead to slip-ups – but we can train ourselves to avoid them.
Crise nas artes
Creative buds can bloom in a recession: There is less money but more working space in hard times
Artists in survival mode as market crumbles: As galleries cut back and sales plummet, many artists are struggling to scrape by with odd jobs.
Arts world braced for 'hurricane' as recession hits: From art galleries to opera houses, UK cultural organisations face cutbacks or even collapse as private sponsors pull out and government money dries up
Discussions on arts cuts 'sacrosanct': Deputy Canadian Heritage Minister Judith LaRocque refused yesterday to give a parliamentary committee any details about how the Conservative government chose $44.8-million in arts and culture programs to be cut last fall.
Could box office bonanza dry up? After several years of moaning that hedge funds had overfilled the release schedule, studios began threatening to cut back their slates. Now, they may be cutting back more than they wanted.
Russian movie industry in grips of big chill: About 100 Russian film projects have been canceled or suspended since the fall, when the film industry experienced the impact of the economic crisis, according to the Russian film industry's trade journal, Byulleten kinoprokatchuika. Earlier this year, Mosfilm, the country's largest studio complex, said it had no films being shot in its studios.
10,855 litros de água para fazer uns jeans?
Water has an image problem: Many people believe it's cheap and abundant. But due to our current water management systems, one in five people on the planet do not have adequate access to safe, clean drinking water.
Radicais porquê?
Internet radicals ready themselves for European Parliament: "The battle over our privacy and the hunt on filesharers is fought down in Brussels. That is why we want to go there," the party's leader Rickard Falkvinge told EUobserver.
The group's electoral platform is based on three principles: to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected.
Coisas que não sabíamos 30 segundos antes
The success of drug decriminalization in Portugal: In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present.
[artigo intermitente - aparece e desaparece, tal como os +500 comentários]
Mapear tribos urbanas
Mapping a City's Rhythm: The New York startup, Sense Networks, has developed algorithms that can identify distinct types of behaviors of people in a city, and group them into so-called tribes. The first animation shows the changing whereabouts of these tribes over the course of an evening in San Francisco and the second animation depicts the process of identifying the primary tribes visiting the top 200 nightlife destinations during a certain period of the night.
Muito francamente...
Arthur Sulzberger: "Quite Honestly I'm Tired of Hearing About the Death of Newspapers": And on the burning question if the newspaper industry is quickly fading into the thin night air, Mr. Sulzberger ended on a positive assessment of the industry, by citing results of a study released Thursday by the Center for Media Research, which reported:
• 83% of Americans say print newspapers are relevant.
• 53% subscribe to a newspaper, and
• 55% say newspapers are their primary source of news, over national TV, local TV and "news aggregators."
15 Março 2009
Jogo de palavras
Doug Nufer writes fiction, poetry, and performance pieces that seem to be based on formal constraints even when they are not. Never Again, the most audacious example of his work to date, is a novel in which no word appears more than once. It is the story of a gambler who narrates how he set out to avoid the mistakes of his past by doing (and saying) nothing he ever did (or said) before.
14 Março 2009
Mapa do mundo
earthmine is creating a new kind of map, a pre-collected, geospatially accurate data set of the world that is accessed through an intuitive panoramic interface.
Redes sociais e países
Battle of the sizes: Social network users vs. country populations
Some quick observations:
* Apparently the Chinese social network QZone is even bigger than Facebook.
* Facebook is bigger than Russia.
* MySpace is pretty close in size to Mexico.
* LinkedIn, Bebo and Xanga are bigger than Canada.
* Considering Twitter’s strong growth, it won’t be long until it’s bigger than Sweden.
* Orkut is larger (barely) than France.
* And finally: Does EVERYONE in the Philippines have a Friendster account?
Heróis (comunicado de imprensa)
Obama, Jesus and Martin Luther King Top List of America’s "Heroes": ROCHESTER, N.Y. – February 19, 2009 – When The Harris Poll® asked a crosssection of adult Americans to say whom they admire enough to call their heroes, President Barack Obama was mentioned most often, followed by Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King. Others in the top ten, in descending order, were Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Abraham Lincoln, John McCain, John F. Kennedy, Chesley Sullenberger and Mother Teresa.
Má criação e Internet
Hadopi: surveiller et punir Internet: Nicolas Sarkozy est le partisan résolu d’une gouvernance moderne, basée sur un dialogue avec l’opinion publique à travers les médias et les corps constitués. Son usage de l’outil législatif manifeste cette option. Plutôt qu’à établir les règles du jeu social, les lois soumises au Parlement servent à adresser des messages ou à afficher une politique.
C’est bien sous cet angle qu’il convient d’examiner la loi «Création et Internet», ou Hadopi, du nom de la nouvelle administration qu’elle institue. Son but avoué est de limiter l’échange de fichiers audiovisuels en ligne, défini comme «piratage», par la suspension de l’abonnement pour les comptes recourant aux plates-formes de partage, ou peer to peer, pour télécharger et diffuser des contenus protégés par le droit d’auteur.
13 Março 2009
Visualizações
SXSW 2009 PepsiCo Zeitgeist Twitter Visualizer: The Tweetsphere is already quite crowded with aggregate and visual interfaces (think Twitter Blocks, Tweet Stats, Tweet Volume, Twitter Meter, Tweetpad, Twitter Counter, and many more), but this one [PepsiCo SXSW Zeitgeist] seems to stand out in terms of its interactive and real-time tracking features
Hacking da televisão
BBC programme broke law with botnets, says lawyer: A BBC programme has broken the Computer Misuse Act by acquiring and using software to control 22,000 computers, creating a botnet capable of bringing down websites. A technology law specialist has said that the activity is illegal.
BBC botnet investigation turns hacks into hackers: Changing PCs without permission always wrong
An investigation by the BBC into cybercrime may itself have broken UK computer crime law.
BBC team exposes cyber crime risk: Software used to control thousands of home computers has been acquired online by the BBC as part of an investigation into global cyber crime.
Política europeia de ciência
Commission calls for doubling funding for ICT research and innovation: Today Europe represents 34% of the global information and communication technologies (ICT) market, and its value is growing by 4% per year. However, the value added produced by the EU's ICT sector amounts to only 23% of the total, because both Europe's market and research efforts are fragmented. As a result, Europe is lagging behind its global competitors in ICT research and in the production of innovative ICT-based products and services. The strategy proposed calls on Member States and industry to pool resources and work together more in ICT research and innovation. The strategy also proposes showcase ICT innovation projects to deliver modern services infrastructures in areas like healthcare and energy efficiency.
Parliament will stop Barroso's stimulus plan: The European Parliament will mobilise a majority against Commission President José Manuel Barroso's five billion euro stimulus plan, Claude Turmes, vice-president of the Green / European Free Alliance Group in the European Parliament, told EurActiv in an interview.
Turmes made clear that he is against the Commission's recent proposal to reallocate five billion euro of unspent EU money, mostly to support energy projects
Impactos de silêncio
12 Março 2009
Portugal em sexto (e primeiro não-anglófono)
The countries buzzing the most about Twitter in 2009: To be able to examine the worldwide buzz about Twitter (the general interest level per country, if you like) we have looked at Google search data for searches made so far in 2009. This gave us a fresh perspective on the current trends.
...
Bebé morreu após ter ficado fechado várias horas num carro
Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?
"You are potentially capable of forgetting your child": A heartbreaking article about parents who accidentally leave their kids to die in hot cars challenges us to feel compassion, not contempt.
Conselhos para jornalistas desempregados
Laid Off? 10 Tips For Suddenly Unemployed Journalists
1. Don't freak out
2. Get your finances in order
3. Apply for unemployment
4. Network like crazy
5. Get on Facebook and LinkedIn
6. Expand your new media horizons
7. Start a blog
8. Look beyond journalism for your next job
9. Don't be afraid to ask for help
10. Take a deep breath
Good luck.
Intranets na Internet
“Internet monitored and controlled, even in democracies”: Reporters Without Borders today issued a report entitled “Enemies of the Internet” in which it examines Internet censorship and other threats to online free expression in 22 countries.
“The 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ - Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam - have all transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information,” Reporters Without Borders said.
Impressão digital
Perceptual hashes have applications in searching, identifying potential copyright infringement, entertainment and surely more.
perceptual hash n. a fingerprint of an audio, video or image file that is mathematically based on the audio or visual content contained within. Unlike cryptographic hash functions which rely on the avalanche effect of small changes in input leading to drastic changes in the output, perceptual hashes are "close" to one another if the inputs are visually or auditorily similar. [via]
Coisas de medias
Introducing Media Cloud: A new tool to track how news gets covered Media Cloud is a massive data set of news — compiled from newspapers, other established news organizations, and blogs — and a set of tools for analyzing those data.
Going Digital: The Next Generation of News: A new exhibit in the Newseum’s Digital News Gallery explores the next generation of news gathering and dissemination and what effect the changes may have on journalists and the news industry. A seven-minute video produced by the Newseum — "Digital Newspapers: The New Reality" — accompanies the exhibit.
As Cities Go From Two Papers to One, Talk of Zero: “In 2009 and 2010, all the two-newspaper markets will become one-newspaper markets, and you will start to see one-newspaper markets become no-newspaper markets,” said Mike Simonton, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, who analyzes the industry.
Many critics and competitors of newspapers — including online start-ups that have been hailed as the future of journalism — say that no one should welcome their demise.
Uma coisa é certa
Shortchanging Citizens, Damaging the Profession: How Anthropology Disparages Journalism: A common refrain among academic anthropologists is this: "I never talk to journalists, they always get me wrong. I just can't trust them." Whenever I hear this my mind churns, "Then why don't you become the journalist and write it yourself?" Applied anthropologists are more inclined to write an occasional journalistic piece, but it's not viewed as a central focus of applied work. Again, why not become the seasoned journalist?
Is there a career danger for an anthropologist in wanting to be a relevant, publicly engaged writer? Maybe. [...]
One thing is certain. We need a new wave of writers and journalists, unafraid to do the most radical thing imaginable: simply describe reality. Their ranks will largely come from freethinkers, dissenting academics and bored mainstream journalists who rediscover what got them interested in anthropology in the first place, telling the truth.
[obrigado, João]
Jornalismo patrocinado
Time's Stein decides to be the first columnist to solicit product placement: Joel Stein's plan was going smoothly ["This Journalist Is Brought to You by..."] "until my editor's editor's editor decided we had a policy against the mingling of advertising and editorial content." He tried, but "all my efforts did was teach me exactly why the proud, antediluvian print-journalism companies are in financial trouble. Not only is Time Inc. turning down $25,000 [solicited for the column], but it's employing three editors for this column."
Marketing de boca
SocialMedia.com provides simple and scalable word of mouth marketing for brands. We get millions of people to voice brand specific messages to their closest friends. It's word of mouth, without the heavy lifting.
Mapa de acesso online à ciência
Los Alamos researchers create 'map of science': This "Map of Science" illustrates the online behavior of Scientists accessing different scientific journals, publications, aggregators, etc. Colors represent the scientific discipline of each journal, based on disciplines classified by the Getty Research Institute's Art and Architecture Thesaurus, while lines reflect the navigation of users from one journal to another when interacting with scholarly web portals.
Preservação ou destruição?
The Digital Divisions Are Dead At Big Media: Big Media’s love affair with the Internet ebbs and flows with the markets. When they see money pouring into Web startups, they feel threatened and rush to do the same. They ramp up their digital divisions, which usually are no more than venture arms, and hope to strike it rich. When the markets are down, as they are now, their attention drifts elsewhere—exactly at the time when they can pick up innovation on the cheap. [...]
Consider, for example, that CBS’s entire market capitalization is now only $2.5 billion, which is not much more than the $2.1 billion its digital division CBS Interactive paid in cash over the past two years for Cnet ($1.8 billion) and Last.fm ($280 million). (It also made a number of other smaller acquisitions and investments). As of December 31, 2008, CBS only had $419 million in cash on its balance sheet.
When it bought Cnet last May, CBS’s market cap was $16.5 billion. [...]
Media executives are going into self-preservation mode. They know that all media businesses are going digital, eventually. But right now, they are more concerned with sheltering their core business than with pushing forward a digital business that will leech attention and profits from the core business.
Mindcasting
On Twitter, mindcasting is the new lifecasting: Twitter, the micro-messaging service where users broadcast short thoughts to one another, has been widely labeled the newest form of digital narcissism. And if it’s not self-obsession tweeters are accused of, it’s self-promotion, solipsism or flat out frivolousness.
But naysayers will soon eat their tweets. There’s already a vibrant community of Twitter users who are using the system to share and filter the hyper-glut of online information with ingenious efficiency. Forget what you had for breakfast or how much you hate Mondays. That’s just lifecasting.
Mindcasting is where it’s at.
11 Março 2009
O objectivo é a duplicação de resultados para uma maior fiabilidade científica?
Europe ‘wasting billions’ by duplicating research: The European Union is wasting billions by investing in new research projects which have already been done by other European scientists, Roland Strauss of Knowledge4Innovation told EurActiv in an interview. Improved communication between research institutes and better use of existing patents could lead to sizeable savings, he said.
Medias mais sociais
10 Ways Newspapers are Using Social Media to Save the Industry
1. Twitter headline feeds
2. Acquiring providers of social media services
3. Creating more online events to attract readers
4. Promoting and monetizing user-generated content
5. Story-based communities
6. Collaborative outsourced news services
7. Customized delivery
8. Branded communities
9. Publishing APIs for third-party developers
10. Burning the boat that brought you
O novo jornalista? Phewf!
Multimedia Journalist: statistician and computer nerd? expected to be film makers, radio reporters, photographers, interviewers, web designers, independent researchers, graphic designers, idea generators, legal eagles not to mention just your average text-hack.
Phewf!
But I got two more to add to the list now-statistician and computer programmer. Why? [...]
Journalism students at UNC are actually taught things like XML and MySQL; these extra skills make them hugely more versatile, hugely more valuable to employers - and preparing them for a brand new way of story telling. [via]
A ler também este "estado do jornalismo de saúde nos EUA"
Informação útil
Sex, Lies and Photoshop: The Seedy World of Retouching [via]: Why magazines should let readers know if images have been retouched.
Motwitter de busca
How Twitter Could Bring Search Up to Speed: Some say that Twitter may be as important to real-time search as YouTube is to video.
Projecto
Open Up Government Data: Now is exactly the time when lobbying for particular data and documents to be made accessible could be most effective. Who's gonna run this colossal effort? Chinese and Indians, maybe.
Dor na fraude científica
Doctor accused of faking studies: His work dealt with pain drugs (exemplo): A widely known Massachusetts anesthesiologist whose research has influenced how doctors treat surgery patients for pain has been accused of fabricating results in at least 21 published studies and, in some cases, even inventing patients.
Physicians and journal editors said the allegations, if proven, could constitute one of the largest and longest-running cases ever of medical research fraud.
Eu?... Eu?!?! Eu.
French town of Eu to change name because of Google searches: Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, the local mayor, now has two options - to pay internet giants like Yahoo and Google thousands to put the town at the top of all "Eu" searches, or change the town's name.
"The second option appears the most sensible," said Mrs Gaouyer, adding: "As far as the internet is concerned, we have to bring ourselves up to date." Mrs Gaouyer's favoured option is Ville d'Eu (Town of Eu), with other possibilities including Eu-le-Château and Eu-en-Normandie.
A ter em atenção
Opt-in Reforçado: No dia 9 de Maio entra em vigor o Decreto-Lei n.º 62/2009, que altera a Lei do Comércio Electrónico, no que diz respeito às mensagens não solicitadas (para fins de marketing directo).
Nos termos deste diploma, a Direcção-Geral do Consumidor passará a gerir uma lista, permanentemente actualizada, relativa às pessoas que manifestem o desejo de não receber mensagens para fins de marketing directo.
10 Março 2009
html 5
An Upgrade for the Web: Browsers are changing to accommodate powerful applications. [...]
The next generation of HTML, the markup language that is used to build most Web content, promises to make Web applications work even better. Some proposed features of this new standard--HTML 5--are already being built into several popular browsers, offering a glimpse of an application-enabled Web.
Investigação Portugal-Android-Alemanha
Portugal is our partner: The IT experts are working on new, intuitively operable mobile phones, for example. They use existing open source software, simplifying the interfaces between mobile and the Internet. And so users cannot only take photographs with their mobile phones: at the push of only one button, they can now share and distribute self-generated photos and videos over the Internet. Family, Friends, and interested like-minded have easy access to the content as well: Besides the PC, digital photo frames or the TV can be used.
Objecto da actividade: o projecto consiste no desenvolvimento e na implementação de aplicações e sistemas baseados no sistema operativo Android.
Interpretações
The Problem of Perception: most scientific controversies do not revolve around specific experimental data, but instead are disputes over data interpretation.
10 e mais algumas
10 little white lies you hear about the future of newspapers [via]
1. Print is dead.
2. Journalism is dying.
3. Paid online content will save newspapers.
4. No one will pay for online news.
5. You haven’t tried anything.
6. You should try everything.
7. We’ve tried everything.
8. We’ve certainly tried that before, and it didn’t work then, so it won’t work now.
9. This is all corporate media’s / Google’s / Craig’s / Bush’s / Obama’s / the economy’s / the Internet’s / journalists’ / management’s / education’s fault.
10. No one will miss newspapers when they’re gone.
Tabela periódica
Google Image Periodic Table: I created a periodic table of elements by taking the first image returned by google when the name of an element was searched for. This piece creates a snapshot of what our culture associates with these particular words. For example, Platinum is associated with a hair color most often, Krypton with Superman, and Lithium with it’s pill form.
09 Março 2009
Senhoras, "start your engines"!
Vatican says washing machine brought rights to women: The washing machine has had a greater liberating role for women than the pill, the official Vatican daily said in an International Women's Day commentary.
Ligações de blogues
The 50 Media Sites Bloggers Link To The Most: Here’s the list in its entirety from Technorati’s index:
1. YouTube
2. New York Times
3. BBC News
4. CNN.com
5. MSN
6. guardian.co.uk
7. Washington Post
8. Yahoo! News
9. Reuters
10. Los Angeles Times
Duas críticas e mais umas ideias
No More Free Content: Newspaper subscribers are not paying for the news in the printed paper, we are paying for delivery (convenience). Single issue news stand sales: also convenience and delivery. The newspaper has been, effectively, giving the content away for decades. What, then, has changed? [...]
The picture I’ve painted of a business model gone bad is painful, some would say grim. But the news consumer is not the boogyman here, so stop blaming us. Instead, focus on finding a new business model that works in the digital world.
Inefficient print: Print has always been inefficient. Now advertisers are learning just how inefficient as online becomes more efficient. This is another reason to develop the strategy to drop print now.
The Online Experiments That Could Help Newspapers: Newspapers had hoped that their Web sites would help them replace evaporating print revenue. But an online ad typically garners one-tenth of the revenue of a print ad, estimates Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. "The phrase in the industry is, 'You are trading dollars for dimes,'" he says.
Could customized newspapers bring readers back? The service, which allows readers to pick and choose only the stories that interest them, is among the many maneuvers that newspapers across the country are making to respond to the changes the Internet has wrought on their businesses.
Bring On The Techies: How Silicon Valley Can Help Save Newspapers: How badly does the newspaper industry need new ideas?
Vídeo online
Promoters of all kinds take a shot at online video: Businesses, colleges and institutions are leaping into online video production as the audience for clips soars and production and distribution costs plummet.
"It's a gigantic business," says Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, an Internet video services firm. "Every single month it's just grown and grown, to the point where a majority of our customers now are not media companies. They are people using the Web to market, communicate, educate and inform."
Imprensa: vale tudo
NY Times Chairman: Never Seen Things This Bad: "We'll consider anything."
The MinnPost Model: Is it sustainable? Could this business model—one dependent almost entirely on the goodwill of foundations and the charity of its readers—be sustainable? How to translate web traffic into enough cash flow to ensure financial independence? No one, not even MinnPost founder Joel Kramer, knew the answer. [...]
The site revised downward its initial projections and now doesn't expect to break even until 2012—more than a year behind schedule.
50 anos de Barbie
What would a real life Barbie look like? She turns 50 on Monday, but Barbie has a remarkable figure for a woman of any age. So what if you scaled her up to human proportions?
A doll for the ages: Change has been a constant for Barbie's 50 years
4 Barbie is the brainchild of Ruth Handler, one of the founders of Mattel.
5 Handler was inspired by a European doll called Bild-Lilli, a doll for adults that Handler said she saw in Vienna or Lucerne.
6 Handler named the Americanized doll after her daughter, Barbara.
9 Barbie's boyfriend is Ken. He's named after Handler's real-life son, who, incidentally, hated the comparisons.
10 Barbie and Ken split up in 2004. They reunited in 2006.
17 There are more than 500 groups related to Barbie on Facebook, including one called Tequila Barbie.
18 Another group is called Divorce Barbie. "Divorce Barbie comes with Ken's boat; Ken's house; Ken's car; Ken's money;" and, well, you get the idea. Last time we checked, there were eight members.
30 The first commercials for Barbie ran on "The Mickey Mouse Club."
08 Março 2009
Web como palco e cultura de confluência
All the World Wide Web’s a stage: The performance of identity in online social networks
Abstract: This paper discusses how ideas of performance can be used to conceptualize the play of identity formation on social networking sites (SNS). Linking Goffman’s theories of social performance with Granovetter’s notion of the social tie, this paper will argue that identities on SNS are deliberately constructed performances that straddle the frontstage and the backstage, the public and the private, and in doing so both support and rely upon webs of social connections which engage with fluid or playful identity constructions.
Beyond convergence: Confluence culture and the role of the advertising agency in a changing world
Abstract: New Internet technologies allow online users to create content. Some of this content is brand information that traditionally developed and promoted by advertising agencies. Agencies have reacted to this phenomenon in different ways: some embrace it, some ignore it, and others encourage employees to act as consumers in developing content, perhaps in questionable ways. This essay presents a concept called confluence culture to describe the changes that the advertising industry is currently undergoing relative to the rise of digital culture. We argue that all advertisers, in order insure their relevancy, must recognize the role confluence culture plays in their work.
Dois a olhar para o mesmo [act.: e + 1]
ebooks could save US newspapers: Seattle is in danger of becomnig a one-newspaper town, says our man on the spot. But can ebook readers rescue its journalism? [o outro não está online...]
The Amazon Kindle is the Great White Hope for Monetizing Print Media
Wikipedia no telemóvel
WikiPock Will Put An Entire Copy Of Wikipedia In Your Pocket For $10: Would you pay $10 for an entire offline copy of Wikipedia, the crowdsourced encyclopedia of information that you can get on the Web for free? WikiPock, a Paris-based startup, has compressed the entire English language version of Wikipedia to under 4 gigabytes (not including images), and is selling it for mobile phones. The other language versions are smaller (it also comes in German, French, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish).
07 Março 2009
Português "exclarecido"
Magalhães tem tantos erros que "è" difícil "contar-los": O Ministério da Educação incluiu no computador Magalhães jogos educativos cujas instruções em português são um festival [?] de erros. Ortografia, sintaxe, gramática - nada resiste ao 'magalhanês'. [...]
O tradutor da versão portuguesa do software tem quase as mesmas habilitações que as crianças que utilizam o Magalhães: José Jorge tem a 4ª classe [?] e vive em França desde os 10 anos. "O problema da tradução é que nenhum português de Portugal se dedicou a ela", lamenta o emigrante.
Educação: Directora regional não sabe escrever: “Sendo certo que muitos docentes não se aceitam o uso dos alunos nesta atitude inaceitável, acompanharemos de muito perto a defesa do bom nome da escola, dos professores, dos alunos e de toda uma população que muito tem orgulhado o nosso país pela valorização que à escola tem dado”. [via?]
E a ver, claro, a extensa lista de erros em meios de comunicação social reveladas no Reflexões de um cão com pulgas... Exemplo:
Em paralelo, Hacking Education (continued):
1) The student (and his/her parents) is increasingly going to take control of his/her education including choice of schools, teachers, classes, and even curriculum. That's what the web does. It transfers control from institutions to individuals and its going to do that to education too.
2) Alternative forms of education (home schooling, charter schools, online learning, adult education/lifelong learning) are on the rise and we are just at the start of that trend.
3) Students will increasingly find themselves teaching as well. Peer production will move from just producing content to producing learning as well.
4) Look for technologies and approaches that reduce the marginal cost of an incremental student. Imagine that it will go to zero at some point and get on that curve.
5) The education system we currently have was built to train the industrial worker. As we move to an information driven society it is high time to question everything about the process by which we educate our society. That process and the systems that underlie it will look very different by the time our children's children are in school.
6) Investment opportunities that work around our current institutions will be more attractive but we cannot ignore disruptive approaches that will work inside the existing system. Open courseware, lesson sharing, social networks, and lightweight/public publishing tools are examples of disruptive approaches that will work inside the existing system.
7) Teachers are more important than ever but they will have to adapt and many will have to learn to work outside the system. It was suggested at hacking education that teachers are like bank tellers in the 1970s. I don't agree but I do think they are like newspaper reporters in the 1990s.
8) Credentialing and accreditation in the traditional sense (diplomas) will become less important as the student's work product becomes more available to be sampled and measured online.
9) Testing and assessment will play more of a role in adapting the teaching process. A good example of this is how video games constantly adapt to the skill level of the player to create the perfect amount of creative tenstion. Adaptive learning systems will soon be able to do the same for students.
10) Spaces for learning (schools and libraries) will be re-evaluated. It was suggested that Starbucks is the new library. I don't think that will be the case but the value of dedicated physical spaces for learning will decline. It has already happened in the world of professional education.
11) Learning is bottom up and education is top down. We'll have more learning and less education in the future.
HDR
Breathtaking New Time-Lapse Movie Tech: Adapting a technique from NASA's interplanetary missions, photographers can now expose everything from darkest to brightest in a single frame, then combine many frames to make a strikingly detailed time lapse movie.
Verdades presumidas
OR,
ENQUIRIES
INTO
Very many received
TENENTS
And commonly presumed
TRUTHS.
By Thomas Brown Knight, M. D.
Based on The Sixth and Last Edition of 1672
06 Março 2009
E-learning
Open Education: A New Paradigm: The promises of open technologies for education: BETWEEN 2010 AND 2025, nearly 80 million “baby boomers” will leave the workforce, just as they entered it between 1960 and 1980. When this exodus occurs, only 20 percent of workers remaining will possess the skills required for most of the jobs being created today. On a global scale, the United States, the European Union, Japan, China, and India will face critical shortfalls of 32 million technically specialized professionals. Throughout the world, the demand for educated professionals is growing faster than populations of people with the required skills.
A more open culture of collaboration will ultimately lower costs of operation and delivery.
The education industry is facing challenges that make improvements more critical than ever
Predictions for 2009: One change already evident is the further growth of e-learning programs in the corporate and academic sectors due to lowered costs, more convenient access, and increased demand. Enhancing one's skills is always beneficial, especially in times when opportunities abound. The limiting factor is less often technology and bandwidth and more often time.
A ver
World Builder, by Bruce Branit (405), was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production.
Ir e voltar, sem visa
Who has the most freedom to travel? Danes faced the fewest restrictions on travel in 2008: they were able to visit 157 countries or territories without a visa according to an annual report by Henley & Partners, a consultancy. The Irish, Finns and Portuguese were only marginally less welcome abroad, with visa-free travel available to 156 countries.
Biónicos
You-SB: Purely a “visualization” project, yet in an age where a person can have their entire anatomy changed, how far off can this be? When does the machine become the body? What would you have implanted?
Novas tendências sonoras
The Music Industry's New Internet Problem: Music sites with freely accessible content are being used by a growing number of listeners as a substitute for buying music
1984, Guerra e Paz ou Ulisses, perdoa-se. Mas a Bíblia?!?!
Most Britons have lied about the books they read: Two out of three Britons have lied about reading books they have not, and George Orwell's "1984" tops the literary fib list, according to a survey published Thursday.
Commissioned by organizers of World Book Day, an annual celebration of reading in Britain, the study also shows that the author people really enjoy reading is J.K. Rowling, creator of the bestselling Harry Potter wizard series.
According to the survey, 65 percent of people have pretended to have read books, and of those, 42 percent singled out "1984." Next on the list came "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy and in third place was James Joyce's "Ulysses."
The Bible was in fourth position
Leitor de tweets
TwitteReader turns Twitter into a feed reader: Once you've plugged in your username and password, it presents the latest tweets as individual feed items, which you can cruise through either by reading the short snippets (a la Google Reader) or expanding them out to full posts with a click.
Críticas e comentários
Fair comment: Books and other products sold by online retailers can attract thousands of reviews. Why are they worth reading — or writing? The sheer volume of reviews makes far more difference, according to Google’s analysis of clicks and sales referrals. “Single digits didn’t seem to move the needle at all,” says Mr McAteer. “It wasn’t enough to get people comfortable with making that purchase decision.” But after about 20 reviews of a product are posted, “We start to see more reviews—it starts to accelerate,” says Sam Decker, the chief marketing officer of Bazaarvoice, a firm that powers review systems for online retailers. [...]
What is true for reviews does not appear to apply to comments left on news stories or blogs, however. “You can probably have a decent discussion until you get to about 350 comments,” says Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, a popular left-leaning political site. But after that, he says, “most outside people will stay away from the thread, and further growth will come from people already inside that thread carrying forth a discussion, debate, or argument.”
Tratado de coisas estranhas ao corpo
Book from 19th century about foreign objects in orifices: Alfred Poulet wrote the book on foreign bodies found in people's bodies. Literally. His two-volume set from 1880, titled "A Treatise on Foreign Bodies in Surgical Practice," is up for auction on eBay.
+ 1...
The headset that will mimic all five senses and make the virtual world as convincing as real life: The prototype helmet connects wirelessly to a computer which feeds it information about a virtual world or another part of the real world.
It features a high-definition high dynamic screen - which produces pictures ten times darker, or 30 times brighter than conventional television.
A tube connected to a box of chemicals releases smells under the wearer's nose, while a similar device can spray flavours directly into the mouth and provide a texture sensation.
The heat and humidity can be changed using a fan and heater, while surround-sound speakers recreate ambient noise.
Professor Alan Chalmers, of Warwick University, said the headset should be ready within five years.
Entrevistas em vídeo
Uncensored Interview Releases 1000+ Creative Commons Theora Videos: Uncensored Interview, a video producer and licensor of musician interviews, is releasing thousands of videos from its interview footage archive under our most permissive license, Attribution also known as CC-BY.
Tudo acaba por acabar, mesmo no online?
Traditional Publishing RIP is a collection of headlines from around the web, documenting the sad decline of traditional publishing.
We documented the incredibly tumultuous period from October, 2008 to March, 2009. [...]
At this point, traditional media’s fate seems sealed. Media’s next incarnation is anyone’s guess.
Coisas simples
Running from Camera: The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.
05 Março 2009
E a Austrália aqui tão perto...
Australian beach passed off as Costa Brava in tourism advert: Spanish officials have been caught passing off pictures from Australia and the Bahamas as their own in an effort to boost the country’s flagging tourism industry.
Officials from the Costa Brava Pyrenees Tourism authority have admitted using a photograph of a pristine beach and blue seas taken in Australia to illustrate a sun-baked strip of the northeastern Spanish coastline traditionally popular with British tourists.
De acordo
The end of print? We think not! By supporting your newspaper you will fight for your own voice. By telling what you want and expect from a newspaper, one that’s worth both your money and your time, you will be fighting for a better world. [via]
A banca
Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.
The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.
Daft Tron
Daft Punk: Tron 2.0: French electronica duo Daft Punk has been signed to write the original music score for Tron 2.0, Walt Disney's upcoming sequel to the groundbreaking 1982 animation cult hit which was scored by electronic music icon Wendy Carlos. [imagem]
Modelo de negócio: dar a viciados no gratuito?
How About Free? The Price Point That Is Turning Industries on Their Heads: There's an old joke about a businessman who gives away his products. A customer asks: "How do you make money doing that?" He answers: "I make it up on volume."
It's nonsensical, yes. But a funny thing has happened: Giving away the product has become a legitimate business model on the Internet and even beyond. [...]
Newspapers and magazines, saddled with high fixed costs and high distribution costs, have been hit by both the free culture online and the ease with which their product -- which is costly to produce but easy to copy and paste -- is hijacked by free sites put together by unpaid bloggers. [...]
"The last thing you want to do is get people addicted to free. If you're going to go free, you ought to expect that it is going to be the price forever"
Newspapers in Crisis: Migrating Online: Newspaper advertising revenues in the US declined 16.4% in 2008 to $37.9 billion. By 2012, spending will slide to $28.4 billion. Is there hope for this proud medium? [...]
And there is little relief online, where newspaper revenues are dropping as well. eMarketer estimates that even Internet revenues dipped slightly in 2008, 0.4% to $3.15 billion
MediaNews unit sets plans for tailored news [...] in an undisclosed market.
The project, dubbed I-News, will deliver targeted and customized newspaper content to subscribers via their home desktop computers, said Peter Vandevanter, MNG's vice president of targeted products.
Dois em um
Quality journalism under attack: Technology journalism is, in a very large number of cases, shallow and mediocre.
Keeping the ethical flame alive: The IFJ Launches Website for Ethical Journalism Campaign
E os jornais nem são caros mas...
A Bankrupt Media Company Is Better Than a Government Funded One, diz Mathias Döpfner, the 46-year-old CEO of Germany's Axel Springer, Europe's biggest newspaper group
"Newspapers are still very inexpensive. Nowadays people pay 10 cents to send a text message, just to tell someone something like: "I'll be there in a minute.""
Democracia 2 ponto quê?
Democracy 2.0 not quite the upgrade we first thought: Remarkably, what the survey found was that political participation was much more highly stratified by SES [Socio-Economic Status] quintiles for Web-based political acts than for traditional political acts; this result held even when controlling for age and broadband access, and the stratification exists even within age groups. Indeed, the results for simple use of social networking sites weren't even remotely as stratified by SES. [...]
The bottom line is that the web has not solved the problem of political stratification in America, and maybe we should not have thought that it could... the simple fact is that it hasn't lead to a Jeffersonian paradise in which everyone, regardless of their class, is equally involved in politics.