Archive for March, 2009
Microsoft to close the book on Encarta
March 31st, 2009ZDNet – “Microsoft is discontinuing its MSN Encarta encyclopedia software and services over the course of this year”
Jimmy Wales Deadpools Wikia Search
March 31st, 2009Techcrunch – “It is going to take more than just an open search platform to take on Google. Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced today that he is shutting down Wikia Search, the company’s experiment in creating better search results through crowdsourcing.”
March 31st, 2009
Robert Ambrogi – “The folks at Law Librarian Blog wondered whether law librarians use Twitter. So they took a poll. The outcome: Most law librarians do not use Twitter for library-related purposes and have no plans to tweet anytime soon.”
LIFE.com goes live
March 31st, 2009AFP – “LIFE, the defunct US magazine, came back to life online on Tuesday as a website featuring photographs from its legendary and prize-winning collection. Life.com is a joint venture between Time Inc., which owns the LIFE archives, and the Getty Images photo service. The website features pictures from LIFE and new photos from [...]
PACER to List “Sealed vs. Sealed” Cases
March 31st, 2009U.S. Courts – “The Judicial Conference, in its continuing efforts to ensure appropriate public access to court files, has voted to make federal court sealed cases more readily apparent. The Conference, acting at its March 17 meeting, voted to have Internet lists of civil and criminal cases in district courts include a case number [...]
Get Your Degree in Twitter
March 31st, 2009PC World – “Hot on the heels of the proposed change to the curriculum that will see Primary school children learning to use Twitter and Wikipedia, Birmingham City University has unveiled a one year Masters degree course that will look at blogging and social networks.”
New case studies from the Internet & Democracy project
March 31st, 2009Berkman Center – “The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to announce that the Internet & Democracy project, in association with the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, has added a new set of case studies to its series of critical investigations into the Internet’s impact [...]
Wikipedia – Exploring Fact City
March 29th, 2009NYTimes – “Contributors to Wikipedia have wondered aloud lately if — perish the thought — they are running out of topics.”
Canadians find vast computer spy network: report
March 28th, 2009Reuters – “Canadian researchers have uncovered a vast electronic spying operation that infiltrated computers and stole documents from government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, The New York Times reported on Saturday.”
NYT story
15 tools for the Gmail addict
March 28th, 2009Webware – “Gmail is becoming more popular by the day, but it’s far from perfect. Let’s take a look at some tools that will extend its functionality and makes it an even more worthwhile service.”
10 Reasons Your Institution Should Adopt Zotero
March 28th, 2009Zotero Blog – “One of the requests from our gathering of Zotero trainers and promoters at the Zotero workshop last month was for more resources to help promote and spread Zotero at their institutions. To help support our evangelists, we have pulled together this list of ten reasons for institutions to adopt Zotero. Consider forwarding [...]
RIAA, MPAA Copyright Warnings: Facts and Fiction
March 28th, 2009TorrentFreak – “This week several scary stories surfaced about how the MPAA and RIAA are negotiating with ISPs on how to deal with copyright infringers. Even though it was often presented as news, those who look deeper will realize that this is nothing new at all, just the same old threats dressed up in a [...]
A fine Wiivening for teens
March 28th, 2009GlobeGazette – “The Mason City Public Library has become a hot spot for some Mason City youth. Since October 2008 they’ve been gathering there every other Tuesday to perform in a rock band, race, golf, bowl, play tennis and do other activities.”
See the video embedded below.
Facebook at 5 – Is It Growing Up Too Fast?
March 28th, 2009NYTimes – “WHEN Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.”
The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500
March 28th, 2009Gary Hamel – “I compiled a list of 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life. These are the post-bureaucratic realities that tomorrow’s employees will use as yardsticks in determining whether your company is “with it†or “past it.†In assembling this short list, I haven’t tried to catalog every salient feature of the Web’s social milieu, [...]
Education reform: Let’s start by burning all the textbooks
March 27th, 2009Mike Elgan – “President Obama wants to simultaneously improve education while getting costs under control. School districts are so stressed financially that they’re laying off teachers and ending valuable programs. Here’s one modest proposal from the tech blogosphere: Get rid of paper textbooks in favor of digital books and materials for high school and college [...]
Does Twitter Reflect a Change in How We Search?
March 27th, 2009Search Engine Watch – "Having done a session at Search Engine Strategies New York this week on Twitter (Beyond Googling: Where Will We Be Searching in 5 Years) and written "Should Google Buy Twitter?" I’ve started to see a shift in the search world."
See also, Twitter grows 3000% in a year, from ComputerWeekly.
Also, The rise [...]
Grim US newspaper ad revenue figures released
March 27th, 2009AFP – "Last year was the worst ever for the US newspaper industry with both print and online advertising revenue posting declines, according to Newspaper Association of America (NAA) figures. Total newspaper advertising revenue fell 16.6 percent in 2008 over the previous year to 37.8 billion dollars, according to NAA figures released on Thursday."
See [...]
Gov’t transparency website faces private rival
March 27th, 2009TheHill – “As critics slam the administration’s Recovery.gov website for a lack of accessible data, a private company has launched a rival — Recovery.com. Onvia, a 12-year old consulting group, started Recovery.com with the goal of providing real-time data on spending that comes out of the $787 billion stimulus bill.”
CPSIA chronicles, March 27
March 27th, 2009The Overlawyered wrap-up
Adults Spend 8 Hours a Day in Front of a Screen, Study Finds
March 27th, 2009NYTimes – “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.”
Review: Plug-in software that fine tunes iTunes
March 26th, 2009Associated Press – “If you’re picky about music descriptions and want to find album artwork that iTunes doesn’t have, it might be time to get a little help from a software program promising to fill the gaps in digital music collections. I turned to TuneUp, a plug-in application that competes against a similar program [...]
From baby to blog to memoir for Heather Armstrong
March 26th, 2009USATODAY – “Heather B. Armstrong has been blogging since 2001 about depression, childbirth and parenting on her website, dooce.com, which averages 1.5 million visitors a month. Now she has written a memoir, It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $24), that, [...]
Book editors look to bloggers for possibilities
March 26th, 2009USATODAY – “Enlarge image Enlarge I Can Has Cheezburger? is one of several blogs that has been turned into a book. o Yahoo! Buzz o Digg [...]
Economy Tracker
March 26th, 2009CNN.com has a neat little tool to track the economy.
Twitter to seek revenue from businesses
March 26th, 2009Reuters – "Internet start-up Twitter is taking a much-anticipated first-step in its quest to parlay its popularity into revenue by offering certain customers an expanded range of services. The company is preparing to offer commercial accounts in which corporations and other types of businesses pay a fee to receive an enhanced version of Twitter, [...]
NBA’s Arenas says he’s ‘retired’ as a blogger
March 26th, 2009Associated Press – “Gilbert Arenas apparently is ready to return to the court. He swears he is done, however, with his computer. Yes, one of the best-known and most-quoted examples of a star professional athlete conveying his thoughts to the world via his blog is hanging up his keyboard. The Washington Wizards point guard [...]
Their Eyes Were Watching Obama
March 26th, 2009washingtonpost.com – “Student journalists from high schools across Montgomery County are adding their observations and accounts of the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president to the volumes of reporting published on the historic event.”
Idaho teacher sells advertising space on tests
March 26th, 2009Associated Press – “Good morning, class, and welcome to U.S. history, brought to you by Molto Caldo Pizzeria. In a cash-strapped Idaho high school where signs taped near every light switch remind the staff to save electricity, an enterprising teacher has struck a sponsorship deal with a local pizza shop: Every test, handout and [...]
Crystal Cathedral: OMG! Poser tweets as Schuller
March 26th, 2009Associated Press – “Televangelist Robert H. Schuller has reached millions worldwide with his weekly “Hour of Power” TV broadcasts, but when it comes to the Internet, he had a high-tech headache: an online impostor.”
