So what does open journalism look like? A man dies at the heart of a protest: a reporter wants to discover the truth. A journalist is seeking to contact anyone who can explain how another victim died while being restrained on a plane. A newsroom has to digest 400,000 official documents released simultaneously.
The travel section is searching for a thousand people who know Berlin like the back of their hand. The environment team is seeking to expand the range, authority and depth of their coverage. The foreign desk wants to harness as many Arab voices as possible to help report and explain the spring revolutions.
The sports editor is wondering how best to cover every one of the 32 national football teams in the World Cup. The comment editors would like to broaden the spectrum of debate to include political thinkers scientists, theologians, lawyers … and numerous others in society and around the world whose voice is not always heard.
A city trader in New York realises he’s captured on film the moment the police struck a news seller in the middle of a crowd. A woman leaving a theatre is moved to write about her response to the play she’s just seen. A dozen scientific bloggers group together to reach a much larger audience. A nurse wants to share her perspective of the NHS changes.
What you should know about Twitter’s data sales
Twitter users are about to become major marketing fodder, as two research companies get set to release information to clients who will pay for the privilege of mining the data.
Boulder, Colorado-based Gnip Inc and DataSift Inc, based in the U.K. and San Francisco, are licensed by Twitter to analyze archived tweets and basic information about users, like geographic location. DataSift announced this week that it will release Twitter data in packages that will encompass the last two years of activity for its customers to mine, while Gnip can go back only 30 days.
“Harvesting what someone said a year or more ago is game-changing,” said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. As details emerge on the kind of information being mined, he and other privacy rights experts are concerned about the implications of user information being released to businesses waiting to pore through it with a fine-tooth comb.
The End of Advertising
I’ll take this a step further: advertising is on the way out. Technology loathes a middle-man, and advertising as an industry is the king of all middle-men. The purpose of advertising is to connect customers with companies, so as to facilitate a transfer of money in exchange for goods or services. As time goes by, customers and companies will be more and more capable of achieving this on their own.
In the history of the world so far, there has been considerable opportunity for advertisers to misguide customers, and to lure their money toward products or services that can be framed as perfect for them, even when they are not. That’s the art and the holy grail of advertising. But going forward, technology will offer customers and companies the tools to connect effortlessly, optimizing for compatibility without the help of the bogus, outdated advertising system.
The Economic Effect of Endorsements
This paper studies the economic effects of endorsements. In the publishing sector, endorsements from the Oprah Winfrey Book Club are found to be a business stealing form of advertising that raises title level sales without increasing the market size. The endorsements decrease aggregate adult fiction sales; likely as a result of the endorsed books being more difficult than those that otherwise would have been purchased. Economically meaningful sales increases are also found for non-endorsed titles by endorsed authors. These spillover demand estimates demonstrate a broad range of benefits from advertising for firms operating in a multiproduct brand setting.
Kim Dotcom: US Govt Is Protecting An Outdated Monopolistic Business Model
The dramatic shutdown of Megaupload and the US government’s case against the operators of the service has the potential to alter the entire service provider landscape, not just in the United States but all around the world. Indeed, some observers believe that has already happened. After defeating attempts to put him back behind bars yesterday, Mega founder Kim Dotcom is back with more insights into the reasons behind the site’s closure.
After speaking with TorrentFreak on Monday, Kim Dotcom has elaborated on his situation in an interview with 3news’ Campbell Live, which now gives us the opportunity to reveal a bit more detail about the current musings of the Megaupload founder.
Aside from the heavy-handed nature of the shutdown, the underlying shock in this case has its roots in the undermining of a previously presumed level of legal protection for service providers.
Earlier this week, Dotcom told us that in recent years Megaupload had spent millions of dollars seeking out the very best legal advice and the conclusions drawn were clear – providing the site did its part in tackling infringement it would be protected under the DMCA and could not be held liable for the actions of its users.
Thoughts on Retirement with Dignity 2.0
When I turned 55 years old back in 2009, I did a study to determine what the 80th percentile 55 year old household looked like financially, in general terms. I originally called the EBRI (Employee Benefit Research Institute) in Washington D.C. because I wanted to get a feel for how well prepared my cohort was for retirement. I was referred to an economist at the University of Chicago who heads up the Survey of Consumer Finances for the Federal Reserve Board. Not exactly the beginning of a movie script, but I struck up a very informative relationship with this individual who lived and breathed the financial reality of the American household.
What unfolded was an eye-opening effort to determine what it would take for the Baby Boomers to retire with a lifestyle befitting the upper middle class of one of the most prosperous societies in the history of the human race. After all, who could be so pessimistic as to forecast failure for the people who sit at the center of our most influential demographic age group? But the data on their current financial condition is, to say the least, daunting. And particularly now, at 57, they do not have much time to prepare.
There were three primary reasons why I chose the 80th percentile 55 (now 57) year old household. First, people in the 80th percentile have the where-with-all to change their behavior to adapt to changing financial goals. Second, I am 57 and I was curious about whom I was hanging out with. Finally, the people born in 1954 are practically at the center of the Baby Boom, which is defined as those born between 1946 and 1964.
Old Maps Online
The OldMapsOnline Portal is an easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world.
It allows the user to search for online digital historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution.
OldMapsOnline has been created by a collaboration between The Great Britain Historical GIS Project based at The University of Portsmouth, UK and Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland.
MediBid
Affordable Medical Care — Your Health, Your Choice!
Affordable medical care is just around the corner. Shop for affordable medical care across state lines, or just down the street, and find timely medical care as a domestic medical tourist. Travel around the world for your medical procedure and enjoy a medical tourism vacation. Forget surgical waiting lists and get timely medical care! The choice is yours.
On MediBid, cash pay patients can shop for medical care from an interactive doctor directory. Doctors taking new patients such as family physicians, plastic surgeons, various specialists, and even destination hospitals and imaging centers, are on MediBid. Patients post medical requests that include health background, as well as information regarding their condition. Patients can even upload images such as a referral from a family physician or an MRI from a radiologist. Doctors bid on these requests. Each bid is private, allowing the patient to choose a doctor not only on price, but also on their credentials, location, and what is included. MediBid isn’t an auction site; it is a place to find a doctor outside your insurance carrier’s network or as an alternative to insurance altogether.
Yosemite HD
Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.