31 maio 2005

TECNOSFERA

Parole, parole, parole...
Governo apresenta plano tecnológico no Outono: O Governo irá apresentar o plano tecnológico no Outono, assegurou o ministro da Economia e Inovação, Manuel Pinho, [o mesmo ministro que, no recente 18 de Maio, "prometeu apresentar até Setembro todas as medidas do Plano Tecnológico do Governo".]

VITAMEDIAS

Write, Citizens! Please, Write!
Here are a few quick suggestions for encouraging citizen submissions:
* Don't ask people to submit "articles"; don't make it sound like you want them to be pretend reporters. Just ask for their snapshots, or funny stories, or touching moments, etc. This was a lesson learned at Northwestern University's GoSkokie citizen-journalism experimental website. Most people don't think they can "do journalism," so don't present it this way.
* Make it super-easy for people to submit photos. Have an e-mail address that people can use to send in cell-phone photos. Make a website photo submission process as easy as Flickr's.
* Offer incentives! Have contests and give prizes for the best funny race stories, or best or funniest photos.
I don't think that getting a citizen-journalism site to a point of critical mass is going to be easy. It's going to take a lot of hard work, and a lot of promotion (of the right kind). We as an industry certainly haven't figured this out yet.

VITAMEDIAS

Dos blogues:
Blogging Becomes A Corporate Job; Digital 'Handshake'? A small but growing number of businesses are hiring people to write blogs, otherwise known as Web logs, or frequently updated online journals. Companies are looking for candidates who can write in a conversational style about timely topics that would appeal to customers, clients and potential recruits.

Why smart companies don't use corporate weblogs: In short, corporations do not expend resources for weblogs because they simply do not return extra value or information from the investment.

Getting to Know You: a handful of new Web sites that are making it their business to let users review their online dates.

SMU lecturer takes heat for telling blog: For most of the past two semesters, nobody knew the identity of "The Phantom Professor" [...] but this spring at Southern Methodist University, students and faculty began recognizing themselves in the phantom's prose. [...]
Earlier this month, Elaine Liner, an adjunct professor who taught writing and ethics classes in SMU's public relations department since 2001, revealed in an online publication that the blog was hers. Liner, who writes freelance theater reviews for a Dallas weekly, also let it be known that in late March she was told her contract to teach at the school would not be renewed.

Brasil X Portugal: estudos nas áreas da Comunicação que estão a ser desenvolvidos tanto no Brasil, quanto em Portugal.

.DE!

[sobre o puzzle numérico que o Público disponibiliza na última página] My Days Are Numbered - I'm addicted to a Japanese logic puzzle. You will be, too. [...]
There's an ongoing sudoku war in Great Britain right now, with several newspapers competing to be the hot sudoku spot. Sudoku books are flying off the shelves. And it's all about to hit these shores. The New York Post has started printing sudokus. According to the Economist, the New York Times is pondering a sudoku offering. Right next to the Sunday crossword, no less. It's a sudoku epidemic!
Sudoku is not new. This sort of puzzle has been around forever, all over the world. (The really nice thing about number puzzles is that they work in any language.) Sudoku is often called "Number Place" in the United States, and it's popped up in puzzle magazines here for years. So, why is it suddenly so popular?

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Mobile tune makes history: A mobile phone ring tone based on the sound of a revving Swedish moped was expected to top the British singles chart

ECOPOL

Here's a Tax We Can All Agree On: The raw material of the media and entertainment industry is fame. [...]
Actually the resource upon which the media and entertainment industry depends is not fame but its toxic run-off, celebrity. [...]
I suggest, therefore, a Celebrity Tax with a low-end base rate of, mmm, 100 percent.

ECOPOL

Empresas portuguesas na China querem mais apoios: Falta de informação, incentivos reduzidos, inexistência de actividades promocionais, fraco apoio logístico e dificuldades no acesso a linhas de crédito são as áreas onde as empresas requerem uma ajuda do Executivo.

[É impressão minha ou são todas elas áreas de competência das tais empresas?!?!?]

ECOPOL

Millionaire Ranks Hit New High: The number of millionaires in the U.S. increased to a record last year, boosted by gains in stocks and global financial markets, according to two new studies.
The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more rose 21% in 2004 [...]
U.S. continues to lead the world in creating new millionaires. The number of households in the U.S. with liquid assets of $20 million or more is increasing by 3,000 households a year.

Sales of More Expensive Wines Are Booming: "Along with the economy improving over the last couple of years, it's helping to move the price up that consumers are willing to pay," [Danny Brager, vice president of ACNielsen's alcohol beverage team] said.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Close Encounters of the Worst Kind: How Steven Spielberg reinvented War of the Worlds in 72 days and learned to love digital filmmaking - fast.

27 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Sinal dos tempos: Blogs to Offer Coverage of World Newspaper Congress/World Editors Forum

TECNOSFERA

Messaging, Email Clients, Hosted Email, Email Security, Email Archiving, UC, IM, Identity Management, Wireless Email and More: there are about 683 million email users worldwide, with nearly 1.2 billion active email accounts. These users send and receive 130 billion email messages per day, although two thirds of that is spam.

.DE!

How late is late? 10 minutes, 17 seconds.
That is the lateness threshold at which people feel it necessary to telephone and admit they are going to be late.

VITAMEDIAS

Wishful thinking? The News-and-Views Industry of the 21st Century: There's nothing in or about a newspaper that the internet can't do better, except one: it's paper. You can take it with you and read it on the subway, or on a bench in the park. Plus, your eyes get tired of staring at a computer screen all day. The best thing about a newspaper is that it's paper.
Which leads me to this conclusion: The best way for newspapers to cut costs, and thus maintain profit margins, may be to outsource writing responsibilities. Content is cheap and abundant, because, as I mentioned before, information is a non-rival good. The comparative advantage of a newspaper is not content provision. For finding talent, and as the prime forum for the exchange of news-and-views, the blogosphere and the internet are better adapted. It's printing and distributing to people's doorsteps every morning dozens of pages of newsprint, portable and easy on the eye, that newspapers and newspapers alone do best. They should focus on that.
A generation from now, running a newspaper will be pretty simple. One, you'll surf the web for good articles, debates, the latest major speeches, think tank reports, and blog posts. Two, select fifty thousand words or so of the best, most relevant content, in a variety of styles. Third, contact the writers for permission to syndicate, decide which fees (for those who ask them) are worth paying, and transfer the appropriate amount to their PayPal accounts. Fourth, correspond with advertisers, and assemble all the ads that are ready to print on a given day. Fifth, lay out your paper. Sixth, send it to the printers. Seventh, distribute it. Your staff will consist of web-surfing editors-and-content-finders, layout people and printers, and delivery boys with bikes, plus a staff to drum up advertisers and maybe a few reporters who deal with local issues.
Newspapers, in short, will end up carrying water for the blogosphere.

ECOPOL

FBI Records: Records detainee saying that Military Police "have been mistreating the detainees by pushing them around and throwing their waste bucket to them in the cell, sometimes with waste still in the bucket and kicking the Qur'an." He adds that "in the Muslim culture, people do not get dressed, shower or use the bathroom in front of others; however, they are being forced to do so."

TECNOSFERA

Abusing Amazon images: you can create URLs that generate odd and unlikely Amazon images

25 maio 2005

ECOPOL

As prioridades do Governo dentro e fora do país...

VITAMEDIAS

Bloggers Take Center Stage: "Never underestimate journalists' desire to read about themselves," said Ana Marie Cox, editor of Wonkette.com, who took pains to examine why blogging is different from traditional media and how it isn't.

Once blogs 'change everything,' fascination with them will chill: Don't get me wrong ? I like blogs. Because I write this column, I get to read about my work in blogs.
In fact, let's create an Alice in Wonderland moment: I'm writing about reading about my columns in blogs, which bloggers will inevitably post. So now, I'll be able to read a blog about my writing about me reading about my writing in blogs. [...]
So, yeah, blogs are cool. Anything that gives people a voice benefits society and makes us all better and smarter ? and, as bloggers have proved, makes established information outlets more accountable. But blogs don't seem to be the second coming of the printing press. They're just another turn of the wheel in communications technology.

Journalists, public on different pages: A national survey of 673 journalists and 1,500 adults finds a wide disconnect between journalists and the public ? both in their views of journalism and in their personal views. [...]
"As journalists, we need to recapture the lost ground not only by holding ourselves to higher standards, but by educating the public as to who we are, how we work and why what we do makes the country better," [Bob Zelnick, a former ABC News correspondent who teaches journalism at Boston University] says.

24 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

The Rise of Pajamas Media What is Pajamas Media? Well, as co-founder Roger Simon explains, Pajamas Media has a twofold purpose. The first is to give bloggers access to more advertising revenue -- in addition to what many bloggers are receiving from Henry Copeland's BlogAds. The second is to develop a Blog News Network that will do what many bloggers fear Google will no longer do; aggregate blog posts on various topics and present them for bloggers and blog readers to peruse and search through.

VITAMEDIAS

The Gender Gap: Women Are Still Missing as Sources for Journalists
The findings may strike some observers as ironic given the efforts of many news outlets to increase their audience by reaching out to women?and particularly to younger women, a group that generally is under represented as news consumers.
Among the findings:
* In every topic category, the majority of stories cited at least one male source.
* In contrast, the only topic category where women crossed the 50% threshold was lifestyle stories.
* The subject women were least likely to be cited on was foreign affairs.
* Newspapers were the most likely of the media studied to cite at least one female source in a story (41% of stories). Cable news, despite all the time it has to fill, was the least likely medium to cite a female source (19% of stories), and this held true across all three major cable channels.
* On network TV, the morning news programs, which often cover lighter fare, relied more on female sources. The evening newscasts were somewhat less likely, but still did so more than cable.
* The sports section of the newspaper stood out in particular as a male bastion. A mere 14% of stories on the front page of the sports section cited a woman, versus 86% that contained at least one male source.

CONTAMINANTES

Physicists uncover Eurovision biases: Voting analysis reveals European cliques and feuds.
Neil Johnson and his co-workers at the University of Oxford, UK, think that the significance of the Eurovision Song Contest goes deeper than music. They regard it as a barometer of European nations' feelings about their neighbours, and thus as a testing ground for compatibility as the creation of a European constitution looms.

Dutch No looks irreversible: Less than two weeks before the Dutch referendum on the EU Constitution, pollsters see a rejection of the treaty as irreversible, with a row over the Eurovision song contest apparently boosting the "no" camp. [...]
Following the elimination of the Dutch contender Glennis Grace in the semi-final of the contest, Dutch popular media showed their dissatisfaction by blaming the lost race on "Eastern European" countries favoring each other.

TECNOSFERA

Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation is a new book that offers first-person accounts of how the personal media revolution will impact movies, music, computing, television and games.

VITAMEDIAS

Atrasado mas ainda a tempo (via Futuríveis):
Democracy can be saved - by following Ebay's example: How does a society ensure that its media is both free and honest, without degenerating into the kind of authoritarian control still favoured in many parts of the world? [...]
Geoff Mulgan, the Prime Minister's former policy supremo, provided an interesting answer: we should learn from Ebay. In an intriguing Demos pamphlet, which he co-authored with Tom Steinberg and Omar Salem, entitled Wide Open: Open Source Methods and their Future Potential he argues for an Open Commission for Accuracy in the Media (OCAM).
Its brief would be 'to promote accuracy across all mass media that are depended on by British citizens [not just BBC outputs]. One of its major tools would be a web-based open system listing journalists, publications, news channels and other websites which would keep track of formal complaints and rulings made by traditional adjudicators [like the Press Complaints Commission], complaints by members of the public who believe that a newspaper or broadcast report has been inaccurate, structures and tools to allow all parties involved in both types of complaint to submit evidence, to discuss and to escalate to adjudication panels'. [...]
In the beginning, of course, most professional journalists would ignore such a site. But after a few years, media employers might start to pay attention. And the public would have somewhere to go to besides Private Eye's Street of Shame column when they felt outraged about some journalistic excess or other.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Lecturer censored in Spanish University (UPV) for defending P2P networks

(continuação aqui, nomeadamente este La UPV pone en la "lista negra" a los medios que hablen conmigo y amenaza acciones legales)

VITAMEDIAS

Television Reloaded: It's a transformation as significant as when we went from black-and-white to color?and it's already underway. The promise is that you'll be able to watch anything you want, anywhere?on a huge high-def screen or on your phone.

TV Anywhere, Anytime: On May 1, TU Media, a subsidiary of SK Telecom, launched a satellite-based service that beams seven video channels to cell phones. (Nokia and Qualcomm are backing similar technologies that won't hit the market until next year.)

New Ways to Drive Home the Message: New technologies that give viewers more control over how they watch TV could spell the end of the classic 30-second commercial. But fear not?advertising is not going away.

The Future of Television: Screens so small they fit inside coffee cups. Marriages arranged by TiVo. Production facilities on Mars. The king of late night [Conan O'Brien] peers into his plasma crystal ball.

VITAMEDIAS

Commission expects most broadcasting in the EU to be digital by 2010: The European Commission today urged EU Member States to accelerate the switchover from analogue to digital broadcasting. [...]
The Commission expects the transition to digital to be well advanced by 2010 and proposes a deadline of early 2012 for phasing out traditional analogue terrestrial broadcasting.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

All-Time 100 Movies (TIME Magazine)

VITAMEDIAS

New York Times Content Eases Toward Paid Subscription: How long can newspapers risk cannibalizing print subscription revenues for the wonders of Web traffic? On the other hand, how long would new Web advertising revenue grow?or even persist ?if newspaper content became hidden from the open Web? Therein lies the eternal struggle. Sometime this September, probably the nation?s foremost brand name in news content?The New York Times (aka NYTimes.com)?will find out as it launches TimesSelect, a $49.95 per year subscription service. Once in place, only TimesSelect subscribers will have daily access to the copy from 22 prominent columnists from The Times and the International Herald Tribune (IHT). Even more interesting for many information professionals, however, TimesSelect subscribers will also have unfettered access to 25 years of New York Times? archived articles. Comparing that $49.95 annual subscription fee with the standard $2.95-per-article fee charged by services such as Factiva or ProQuest or the $1.50-per-article fee often charged by other newspaper archives, this would mean that after the first 17 (or 34) articles used in a year, TimesSelect would open up access to The New York Times? archives.

Paid Content on the Rise in U.K.: A survey by the UK Online Publishers Association (AOP) shows that 63 percent of its members -- all creators of original, quality, branded content -- now charge for content online, compared with 58 percent in 2004. This is despite the fact that the largest source of revenue for the online publishers' grouping is still display advertising [...]
The findings also reveal a decline in one-off (micro) payments, and an increase in subscription models.

20 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Ena, ena, onde é que andaram nos últimos anos? Deco critica ausência da sociedade civil no futuro organismo regulador dos media: "A origem exclusivamente política dos membros deste futuro órgão regulador, com a ausência de quaisquer representantes da sociedade civil organizada, sejam representantes dos jornalistas, empresas de comunicação social ou dos consumidores, representa um evidente retrocesso relativamente à legislação actual no que concerne à representação da sociedade", afirma a associação para a defesa dos consumidores em comunicado hoje divulgado.

VITAMEDIAS

Make Your Blog Pay: This is not really a story to encourage trust in blogs.

ECOPOL

Retrato da influência económica e política do GES em Portugal: Nas últimas eleições, não passou despercebido o facto de os dois porta-vozes para a economia do PS e do PSD trabalharem no GES: do lado socialista, estava o actual ministro da Economia, Manuel Pinho, enquanto Durão Barroso tinha o ex-secretário de Estado do Orçamento do PSD, Miguel Frasquilho. Ambos integravam os quadros do BES, o primeiro como administrador e o segundo como economista-chefe do banco. E Anacoreta Correia e Abel Pinheiro, do Grão-Pará, ambos do PP, são tidos como próximos do GES.
Por sua vez, o actual ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Freitas do Amaral, é um homem do círculo da família Espírito Santo (primo de Ricardo Salgado) e surge frequentemente a colaborar com o grupo. Freitas foi o presidente da Petrocontrol, a holding que detinha a posição do GES na Galp, e que viria a ser vendida aos italianos da ENI e à espanhola Iberdrola em 1999, por sugestão do ex-ministro Pina Moura (nomeado mais tarde pela Iberdrola para representar os seus interesses em Portugal). Pina Moura teria na época uma actuação polémica ao conceder aos accionistas da Petrocontrol isenções nas mais-valias recebidas pela venda da Petrocontrol. Próximo do BES está igualmente Moura Santos, cunhado de António Guterres e próximo de Pina Moura, um intermediário da área energética com interesses em Espanha.
Outro nome associado ao BES é o de António Mexia, o ex-ministro das Obras Públicas e Comunicações de Santana Lopes, e ex-administrador do banco de investimento do BES. A nomeação de Mexia, por Pina Moura, para presidente da comissão executiva da Galp, depois de o GES ter abandonado a empresa, foi controversa. Na altura, a escolha foi tida como uma cedência ao GES, que apesar de ter abandonado a petrolífera mantinha um pé dentro dela. Outro nome associado ao grupo é o do ex-primeiro-ministro, Durão Barroso. Foi conselheiro para área internacional do BES durante os anos em que esteve na Universidade de Georgetown, em Washington.

VITAMEDIAS

Alguém me explica como é que o Prémio Paridade Mulheres e Homens na Comunicação Social finaliza em Duas jornalistas distinguidas. Paridade?... Par e idade? Pela idade? Estou confuso...

VITAMEDIAS

Opening the Era of Open-Source Journalism: "Open-source journalism" is an intriguing concept: Journalists collaborate with readers in the development of a story, even to the extent of publishing a draft before the final version appears.

VITAMEDIAS

PDF Newspapers Will Count as Print Distribution: Spanish newspapers will have a new benefit from the Internet this summer. They will be able to count all PDF downloads and any other digital delivery of the newspaper as a distribution of the print edition.

TECNOSFERA

AnonBlog: a quick technical guide to anonymous blogging

19 maio 2005

ECOPOL

Entre este Não ou este Sim, leia o texto integral da Constituição Europeia e depois decida. E lembre-se, como dizia a revista Forbes a 25 de Abril: "The EU has funny ideas about human rights. For example, the idea that free speech is not among those rights."

CONTAMINANTES

Uma explicação para a derrota do Sporting?
Red is the colour if winning is your game: The Washington Redskins, Manchester United and the Welsh rugby team have all been playing with an unfair advantage. Just seeing their red kit is seemingly enough to cow their opponents into submission even before a ball is kicked. [...]
The same is true in soccer. Five teams in the Euro 2004 competition who had predominantly red in one of their two kits all did significantly better while wearing red, scoring around one extra goal per game.

TECNOSFERA

From Monopoly to Blogpoly: It is just a game.

17 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

"O jornalista pode fazer todas as perguntas": Para mim [Orlando Raimundo, autor de "A Entrevista no Jornalismo Contemporâneo"], no que se refere à imprensa, o autor da entrevista é o jornalista. Esta tese é polémica. O meu orientador, Mário Mesquita, não a subscreve, acha que há sempre uma co-autoria. Eu acho que só há co-autoria no audiovisual. Estou bem apoiado por investigadores universitários portugueses e brasileiros, e até juristas. O Sindicato dos Jornalistas subscreve este meu ponto de vista.

TECNOSFERA

Blogs haven't displaced media, study finds: The study dispels the notion that blogs are replacing traditional media as the public's primary source of information, said Michael Cornfield, a senior research consultant at Pew.
"Bloggers follow buzz as much as they make it," said Cornfield. "Our research uncovered a complicated dynamic in which a hot topic of conversation could originate with the blogs or it could originate with the media or it could originate with the campaigns.
"We can say that if people still have that idea that the bloggers are the new fifth estate, that the bloggers are the new kingmakers, that's not the case."
Blogs May Not Be as Influential as Some Think

IBM Urges Employees to Blog With Care: Big Blue is encouraging its 320,000 worldwide employee to join the blogosphere. They are also being warned to be careful.

16 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Blogging, as in Slogging: blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart. Blogging - if it's done well - has evolved into an all-consuming art. [...]
To succeed in blogging you need to understand it's a craft, with its own tricks of the trade. You need a thick skin. And you must put your life on hold to feed an electronic black hole.

VITAMEDIAS

Newspapers, on the hunt for readers, think smaller: In a world where bigger often means better, newspapers instead are taking a page from the electronics industry, pursuing a quest for smallness and convenience in an effort to retain an increasingly scarce commodity: readers.

VITAMEDIAS

Hundreds of civilians killed after protests turn to massacre

Newsweek Apologizes for Report of Koran Insult: Newsweek apologized yesterday for printing a small item on May 9 about reported desecration of the Koran by American guards at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an item linked to riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan that led to the deaths of at least 17 people. But the magazine, while acknowledging possible errors in the article, stopped short of retracting it.
The report that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet set off the most virulent, widespread anti-American protests in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government more than three years ago. [...]
But [Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor] said in an interview later: "We're not retracting anything. We don't know what the ultimate facts are."

Newsweek apologises for Koran report: More than a dozen people died last week in riots in Afghanistan triggered by the report, which the magazine now admits may have been inaccurate. The Pentagon has called on the magazine to retract the story.
Editor Mark Whitaker said, ?Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.?
The White House said on Monday the apology was insufficient, and that he magazine should retract the report.

How a Fire Broke Out: The story of a sensitive NEWSWEEK report about alleged abuses at Guantánamo Bay and a surge of deadly unrest in the Islamic world.

The Editor's Desk: Did a report in NEWSWEEK set off a wave of deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan? [...]
Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible." Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

13 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Should Terrorism be Reported in the News? the danger of not reporting terrorist attacks is greater than the risk of continuing to report them. Freedom of the press is a security measure.

VITAMEDIAS

O Jornalismo e Comunicação já comentou a nova proposta para a entidade reguladora da comunicação social.
Uma competência que não vi falada é a da "Ampliação das entidades sujeitas a supervisão, incluindo novos meios de difusão de conteúdos característicos da comunicação social, tais como aqueles que utilizam as telecomunicações e a Internet".
Posso estar enganado mas isto não parece adaptar-se aos blogues?...

TECNOSFERA

Internet em Portugal estabilizou nos 1,5 milhões utilizadores: Portugueses mais activos online: Se, de 2002 para 2004 o número de utilizadores únicos de internet não registou grandes variações (até porque a percentagem de internautas que durante o ano de 2004 navegou na internet se situa nos 97.5%), já as páginas visitadas e o tempo dedicado ao meio teve um crescimento assinalável nos últimos três anos.

[act.: Internet usage in the EU25
In the first quarter of 2004, the highest levels of internet usage by individuals in the EU25 were recorded in Sweden (82%), Denmark (76%) and Finland (70%). The lowest levels were registered in Greece (20%), Hungary (28%), Lithuania, Poland and Portugal (all 29%). [...]
At the beginning of 2004, the highest levels of internet usage by enterprises were recorded in Denmark and Finland (both 97%), and in Belgium and Sweden (both 96%). The lowest levels were registered in Portugal (77%), Hungary (78%), Lithuania (81%), and Cyprus (82%).]

12 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Online Newspaper Readership Continues to Rise: Nearly one in three Internet users (29 percent) read an online newspaper in March 2005, representing a total audience of nearly 44 million people, according to a new report by Nielsen//NetRatings? for the Newspaper Association of America. The data, which takes into account both home and work Internet usage, shows a 3.1 percent increase in unique audience in March to Newspaper Web sites, compared with the same period a year ago.

VITAMEDIAS

Muito interessante: Tribune using online focus groups before paper appears in print: Long committed to market research, the Chicago Tribune is now soliciting opinions from an online focus group that allows its members to see and comment on parts of the paper before publication.
[T]he Tribune has tested photographs, layouts and headlines before publication, sources said. The group does not see the text of stories before publication.

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Destroying the Life and Career of a Valued Physician-Scientist Who Tried to Protect Us from Plague: Was It Really Necessary? Thomas Campbell Butler, at 63 years of age, is completing the first year of a 2-year sentence in federal prison, following an investigation and trial that was initiated after he voluntarily reported that he believed vials containing Yersinia pestis were missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University.

In Support of Thomas C. Butler: Eminent Scientist Caught in "Hitchcockian" Situation

11 maio 2005

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Presidente da República promove 20 ideias para inovar Portugal: Escrita a 54 mãos, por 27 autores que se auto-organizaram e decidiram fazer um livro onde se reflectisse sobre como inovar Portugal, a obra 20 Ideias para 2020 foi ontem apresentada na Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, em Lisboa, numa cerimónia a que assistiu o Presidente da República.
João Caraça, que fez a apresentação do livro, chamou-lhe "uma provocação cultural" que revela uma "mudança de atitude", já que foram os próprios autores - com idades entre os 20 e os 35 anos - que tomaram a iniciativa de pensar prospectivamente sobre o que fazer com o país.

["Provocação" com antepassado de 1999 mas sem uma única referência: Portugal 2020: 22 Entrevistas para conhecer o Portugal do ano 2020]

VITAMEDIAS

What's ahead for Net, digital entertainment: Topic: Anyone can create media

Media's Influence on the World: Author Thomas de Zengotita discussed his new book, "MEDIATED: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It," -- a tour through our current culture and how constant bombardment affects our choices and responses.

VITAMEDIAS

Pormenores ou diferenças de tratamento entre filhos e enteados: Ivo Ferreira já chegou a Portugal
Cidadão português detido em Chipre na posse de quatro quilos de droga

[O Público não é caso único neste tipo de diferenciação: na SIC Notícias, os iraquianos são "abatidos" e os norte-americanos "mortos"...]

ZITE

Deanimator [jogo mas não só]

ZITE

Things That Don't Exist

VITAMEDIAS

Eles andam aí?!?!: A estranha conversão da Folha: A Opus Dei tomou conta da Associação Nacional de Jornais (ANJ), tomou conta da Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP), montou junto com a Universidade de Navarra uma rede de consultorias internacionais, domina parte da mídia ibérica e, sobretudo, está infiltrada e dá as cartas nas grandes multinacionais espanholas.

Depois da transcendência, a sala de espera: A Opus Dei começou a atuar intensamente na mídia espanhola e portuguesa nos anos 1980. [...]
Da Península Ibérica, o braço comunicador da Opus Dei transferiu-se para a América Latina.

VITAMEDIAS

Mass-Media Meltdown:
* Hollywood is in a panic, because for nine weeks straight, box office grosses have been lower than last year's. [...]
* The editors and publishers of most major American newspapers are terrified, because declines in newspaper circulation are accelerating at an alarming clip. [...]
* Television networks are reeling from a dramatic contraction of its audience of young male viewers aged 18-34 ? the cohort most desired by advertisers. [...]
* Talk-radio audiences in major cities like New York and Washington have fallen since the 2004 election. [...]
* The American recording industry is in tatters, increasingly unable to introduce new stars and to sell new music.

CONTAMINANTES

How to detect lies Become a Lie Detector

TECNOSFERA

Conversate lets you create instant online discussion spaces

10 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

The New York Times to Unveil New Weekday and Saturday Business Sections; Debut Monday, May 16: The weekday and Saturday editions of Business Day have been redesigned as follows:
-- On Mondays, Business Day will focus on media and marketing news, with technology included as it relates to those industries. David Carr will write a column on new media; the world of blogs will be covered as a regular feature.

VITAMEDIAS

A ler: Wired News Releases Source Review: Wired News has published more than 700 news stories written by Delio (under the names Michelle Delio and Michelle Finley) since 2000. In April, we assigned journalism professor and Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg to review recent articles written by Delio for Wired News. [...]
Penenberg provided Wired News with a list of 24 stories that contained sources he could not confirm [...]
Delio, in communications with Penenberg and Wired News, stands by her reporting and the existence and accuracy of her sources. Most of Delio's sources were in fact located and confirmed by Penenberg. [...]
Wired News is not retracting any of these stories. Rather, we are appending notes to the stories, indicating what we have been unable to confirm about them and editing them, as noted, where appropriate. By keeping these stories posted and clearly marked, we hope that our readers can help identify any sources whom we cannot track down.
In addition, Wired News will now require freelance reporters to submit contact information for all named sources. Also, anonymous sources will be used only with appropriate justification.
Wired News will continue to review the remaining Delio stories in its archive and post notes and report findings as appropriate.

VITAMEDIAS

Newspapers try innovative approaches to regain readership by redesigning front pages with more graphics and shorter stories, offering free publications for younger readers and beefing up their Web sites.

Big media companies weigh blog strategies: "You're not going to see mass blogs equaling some of the largest media companies in other spaces," said Dan Buczaczer, a director at interactive media buyer Starcom IP, part of Publicis. But their very appeal to niche audiences "neatly mirrors where other media is going," he said. [...]
Established media don't regard blogs as a direct threat to their ad models -- yet. But they are flirting with the format, fearing their news could be upstaged by the unbridled mix of opinion and humor offered by individual bloggers.

Craigslist.org Founder Eyes Journalism: founder Craig Newmark told Associated Press editors and writers in a bureau visit, his newest fascination is community journalism.
Newmark hopes to develop a pool of "talented amateurs" who could investigate scandals, cover politics and promote the most important and credible stories. Articles would be published on Internet sites ranging from Craigslist to individual Web logs, or blogs.

VITAMEDIAS

Where the media end and you begin: information is the only thing that causes people to change their behavior. People will go right on doing what they're doing - until they get new information.

09 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

On the business and ethics of blogging [do NYT: Bloggers may need to institutionalize ethics policies to avoid charges of hypocrisy. But the real reason for an ethical upgrade is that it is the right way to do journalism, online or offline. As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves.]

VITAMEDIAS

A Blog Revolution? Get a Grip: "There are too many people looking at blogs as being some magic bullet for every company's marketing problem, and they're not," he added. "It's Internet media. It's just the latest iteration of Internet media."

ZITE

learn morse code in one minute

VITAMEDIAS

Dúvida repetida: O DN visto por alunos de Jornalismo é um artigo genuinamente de provedor ou de jornalista ou de opinião ou o quê?

06 maio 2005

TECNOSFERA

Et pour cause, ler também estes 25 momentos na história da blogosfera (via Memória Virtual)

VITAMEDIAS

As digital dollars grow, b-to-b publishers debate impact of blogs: Jim Spanfeller, president-CEO of Forbes.com, responding to an audience question about when Forbes.com will surpass the print edition in terms of revenue, said, "probably in about 18 to 20 months." Forbes.com is run as a separate company within Forbes Inc.
"I think blogs are an important environmental change on the Web, but I don?t know if it will be as disruptive as some people think for publishers," Spanfeller said. Forbes.com is "trying to endear ourselves to the blogging community with the creation of a blog on blogs," he added.

VITAMEDIAS

The Collapse of Big Media: Starting Over: It?s premature to write an obituary, but there?s no question that America?s news media?the newspapers, newsmagazines, and television networks that people once turned to for all their news?are experiencing what psychologists might call a major life passage. They?ve seen their audiences shrink, they?ve had to worry about vigorous new competitors, and they?ve suffered more than a few self-inflicted wounds?scandals of their own making. They know that more and more people have lost confidence in what they do. To many Americans, today?s newspaper is irrelevant, and network news is as compelling as whatever is being offered over on the Home Shopping Network. Maybe less. [...]
There are many explanations for why Americans have been turning away from their old news providers, including adjustments in how people now live and work (fewer have time to watch the evening news) and the lack of interest in news evident among younger generations whose tastes often carry them to MTV. But the media can also blame themselves for the change. [...]
Yet for the old media to become newly credible, to regain respect and audience, in a country more populous and less enamored of elites than it once was, and more red than blue, they?re going to have to dial down their imperial arrogance. They?re going to have to learn from the best of what the new media offer, and perhaps even recruit bloggers to help with news judgment and fact-checking. And they?re definitely going to have to look for news in places they formerly did not.
Occasionally you see evidence that an old media outlet is beginning to get it. Beginning, I say.

VITAMEDIAS

When Those Pesky Blogs Undermine NPR News: the blogosphere has proven once again to be an amoral place with few rules. The consequences for misbehavior are still vague. The possibility of civic responsibility remains remote. It is a place where the philosophy of "who posts first, wins" predominates. [...]
News organizations may insist on their journalistic prerogatives, update their journalistic ethics guides and hire more ombudsmen, but many bloggers think that's just irrelevant.
And what if they are right?
The blogs showed NPR, when it posted the Defense Department document, that the Web has changed both the rules and the means of disseminating information.

05 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

Via este "Pelo debate alargado sobre a nova entidade de regulação dos media", descobri que Concentração [dos media] vai ter nova legislação e que o Estado reforça intervenção nos media.

No primeiro caso, sobre a proposta do BE, o DN omite a data em que foi publicado. Tem um mês, é de 8 de Abril passado, foi entregue quando Santos Silva conversava com o Sindicato dos Jornalistas. É apenas um pormenor?
Na sua análise à proposta do BE, o DN também esquece o artigo 8º sobre as agências noticiosas em que estas não podem ter capital de empresas com interesses em orgãos de comunicação.

Quanto ao segundo texto, refere que será "competência do novo regulador 'assegurar a liberdade de criação jornalística e a protecção dos respectivos direitos patrimoniais do autor'", não questionando que este último direito já está garantido no artº 9 da lei do direito de autor. Como se protege o que já está protegido?

De resto, concordo com o JeC: o Governo não devia publicar o texto que se encontra a circular apenas entre alguns sábios e deverá ser apresentado à AR até Julho? O "choque tecnológico" não passa também por acções destas?...

ECOPOL

Se "A cerimónia, no Pentágono, decorreu com carácter privado", como explica o Público em Rumsfeld distingue Paulo Portas por méritos de ministério que não era da sua tutela, como é que se podem ver fotos como esta, esta ou esta?

VITAMEDIAS

Media struggle with growing 'blogosphere': More people are blogging than ever -- particularly young people -- while traditional media grapple with dwindling interest and growing criticism from this tech-savvy share of the public, experts told United Press International.
"What blogging has created is a million eyes watching over the shoulders of journalists," Matthew Felling, media director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, told UPI. [...]
"Blogs are the ultimate reason we are seeing journalism clean house nowadays," Felling said. "If some questionable news-gathering behavior had grown to be tolerated, the blogosphere has put an end to that."

They come to recycle the Old Media, not to bury it: Networks have been running shows about cars, homes, exotic travel and practical jokes for 50 years. (Does no one remember "Candid Camera?") For all their radical chic, MTV's fans are just like the past generations they so desperately want to transcend.
This should serve as a cautionary tale for those who are betting big on the doomsday scenarios being peddled about the implosion of the newspaper industry, as well as to those who await the triumph of the so-called "blogosphere." The more the media seems to change, the more its underlying patterns keep reemerging. There's truly nothing new under the sun. [...]
This may sound like a brave new world, but the idea of writers banding together to put out a joint publication is hardly new. We used to call them "magazines." If history is any guide, the Internet won't kill the traditional media, it will be absorbed by it.

Is the blogging bubble hot - or just hot air? Online, it's a different tale. The trouble is that it's going to be really, really susceptible to the "power law" of networks, which dictates that most traffic goes to very few sites (or phone numbers, or traffic junctions, or music CDs). You get economies of scale almost at once, but loyalty is very hard to earn. There's no cost in changing from reading one blog to another - unlike buying a different magazine.
So a few blogs will garner huge traffic, and others will waft back and forth in the currents of readers' unpredictable interests
. The rest of the money will thus be very thinly spread.

Students have lessons for future of U.S. media: Newspapers continue to lose circulation because young people don't read newspapers anymore. [...]
Here's the dirty little secret: Most of these kids say they're not averse to reading newspapers at all, though paying for a newspaper may be another matter.
Make no mistake, these kids get much of their news and information online. But some said they've enjoyed reading the paper since their journalism class required them to do so. A main reason they didn't read it before: It's hard to find one. [...]
"The theory is that accessibility and ease of acquiring the newspaper is really important to this audience, because it's a casual read," said John Murray, vice president of circulation affairs at The Newspaper Association of America. "If you make it easy, they will come."

[Comparem-se com as opiniões no Weblog da disciplina de Cibercultura da Licenciatura em Multimédia do Instituto Superior Miguel Torga, Coimbra, nomeadamente a ficha de trabalho nº6 sobre a questão "will the blogs kill old media?"
Nenhum dos trabalhos refere que partiu de um documento "old media" para escrever num "new media"...
P.S.: Nicole, os jornalistas podem escrever artigos de opinião. Não podem é opinar nas notícias. Por isso o código deontológico especifica: "A distinção entre notícia e opinião deve ficar bem clara aos olhos do público".]

VITAMEDIAS

We'll End Background If You Drop Anonymous Sources: Scott McClellan, President Bush's press secretary, said Tuesday evening that he would end the use of background-only briefings -- if White House reporters would stop using anonymous sources in their reporting. [...]
"You may have misinterpreted my remarks," McClellan wrote in an e-mail. "I was simply saying that this is a larger issue than just background briefings in any administration, as I indicated to you. It is about the widespread use of anonymous sources by the media, an issue that media organizations have acknowledged -- see today's New York Times story. My comment to you was reflecting that I would welcome the media getting rid of anonymous sourcing -- with some rare exceptions that are more than justifiable."

TECNOSFERA

Google Web Accelerator: Designed for Broadband, works with your browser to help web pages show up in a snap.

03 maio 2005

VITAMEDIAS

IFJ and Statewatch Launch Special Report on Journalism, Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism: ?The response by governments to the threat of terrorism is out of all proportion,? says the report. ?The war on terrorism amounts to a devastating challenge to the global culture of human rights and civil liberties established almost 60 years ago.?
The report [...] says:
# Media and independent journalism suffer in a ?pervasive atmosphere of paranoia? which is leading to dangerous levels of self-censorship
# Dissent inside and outside media is being restricted
# Fundamental rights to a fair trial are routinely violated
# Governments are covertly creating massive databanks for surveillance of their citizens
# New international rules are being agreed in a secret process of ?policy laundering?

TECNOSFERA

Blog Networks and Blog Ownership: Many of the issues I'm seeing authors and network owners struggling with revolve around ownership.
Who owns the blog, which party holds copyright, who has rights to take the content? [...]
This is a tricky issue - whoever retains ownership holds considerable power in any relationship. If the publisher owns the blog then they are able to sell it at any point - if the author owns it they are able to walk away from the relationship without warning , taking an income stream away from the network.

VITAMEDIAS

Survey Finds That 84 Percent Of Marketers Plan To Increase US Online Ad Budgets In 2005: Almost half of marketers plan to decrease spending in traditional advertising channels like magazines, direct mail, and newspapers to fund an increase in online ad spending in 2005. Total US online advertising and marketing spending will reach $14.7 billion in 2005, a 23 percent increase over 2004. According to a new five-year forecast from Forrester Research, online marketing and advertising will represent 8 percent of total advertising spending in 2010 -- rivaling ad spending on cable/satellite TV and radio. [...]
Key data points include [...]:
* New advertising channels will draw interest and spending from marketers. Sixty-four percent of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57 percent through RSS and 52 percent on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs.

New data on blogs and blogging: 9% of internet users now say they have created blogs and 25% of internet users say they read blogs.
Another way to render these numbers is to note that 6% of the entire U.S. adult population (internet users and non-users alike) have created blogs. That?s one out of every 20 people. And 16% of all U.S. adults (or one in six people) are blog readers.
These new figures for blog creation represent a bit of an increase ? though within the survey?s margin of error ? from the 7% of internet users who reported to us in November they had created blogs. That translates into more than 11 million American adults who say they have created blogs. The percent of blog readers is a small percentage drop ? again, within the margin of error ? from the 27% of internet users who reported to us in November that they read blogs. The new number translates into 32 million American adults who read blogs.
Some 11% of online men say they have created blogs and 8% of online women have created them.
Blogging is very much the province of the young. Fully 19% of online Americans ages 18-29 have created blogs, compared to 5% of those 50 and older.
When it comes to blog reading, online men and women are equally as likely to have browsed the blogosphere.

VITAMEDIAS

CNN on the Spam Attack? The blogosphere is buzzing with rumors about a strange viral marketing campaign concerning CNN, that may be promoting the cable channel or squelching criticism of it -- or perhaps both at the same time.

.DE!

Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616): A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616.

02 maio 2005

TECNOSFERA

Blogs should not be used as evidence: Individuals should be held responsible for their online writings, but technology hasn?t developed enough for true accountability.
A Web site is not a credible source.

CONTAMINANTES

Leading scientific journals 'are censoring debate on global warming': Two of the world's leading scientific journals [Science & Nature] have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming.

VITAMEDIAS

6 ways TV is changing your life:
1. Running your own network -- wherever you are.
2. Living in an on-demand world.
3. Getting what you want online.
4. Getting cozy with your "home media ecosystem."
5. Ads will start working for you.
6. 500 channels? Try 5 million.

VITAMEDIAS

Print Insists It's Here to Stay: It is no secret: Print feels threatened as never before. Newspapers and magazines may have complained when radio and television came along. But they seem to be in full panic mode now as readers and advertisers flock to the Internet.
With their advertising campaigns, poor old print is declaring that it's not going to take it anymore.
"Enough!" John Kimball, chief marketing officer for the Newspaper Association of America, said in an interview. "You read things that the industry is dead, that the Internet is eating our lunch, that everyone is watching television, that national advertising is declining in the major metros."
"But the medium is very strong
," Mr. Kimball said. "There are lots of ads in the papers, and not because those people think they're making a charitable contribution. They're investing in the medium because it's delivering results."

TECNOSFERA

At Los Alamos, Blogging Their Discontent: A blog rebellion among scientists and engineers at Los Alamos, the federal government's premier nuclear weapons laboratory, is threatening to end the tenure of its director, G. Peter Nanos.
Four months of jeers, denunciations and defenses of Dr. Nanos's management recently culminated in dozens of signed and anonymous messages concluding that his days were numbered. The postings to a public Web log conveyed a mood of self-congratulation tempered with sober discussion of what comes next.

VITAMEDIAS

Dirceu coordenará projeto da Lei de Comunicação Social Eletrônica: O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva designou o Ministro-chefe da Casa Civil, José Dirceu, para coordenar a elaboração do para a Lei de Comunicação Social Eletrônica Eletrônica, o antigo projeto de Lei de Comunicação de Massa. [...]
A nova lei deverá regular os setores de radiodifusão, televisão por assinatura e satélite,entre outros. Além da polêmica que sempre cerca a discussão de regras para esses setores, a lei deverá enfrentar a dificuldade adicional de ser debatida em um ano eleitoral, no qual o governo estará concentrado na reeleição de Lula e nas disputas para os governos estaduais.