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Lyrics to a random song that isn’t really so random….
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About the man who wrote Kansas City, Nebraska
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Useful background & legal analysis on the specious “hot news” claim that AP tried to pull on the Drudge Retort.
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How to do domain mapping to a tumblr blog
Monthly Archives: June 2008
links for 2008-06-25
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“The AP is like a husband who foolishly told his wife that the new jeans do make her butt look big. The best way to limit damage at that point is to simply shut up and hope the subject eventually goes away.”
links for 2008-06-24
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“Fair use law does not, apparently by intention, draw a simple line. It sets up a bunch of criteria that you have to weigh. And so the nightmare reposted-feed site is almost certainly not a fair use.”
links for 2008-06-20
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A pretty unfair screed against Robert Cox and the Media Bloggers Association
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Online Journalism Review ceases publication
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“AP gets Outstanding Hubris in Online Pricing.$12.50 to excerpt five words on a website? Let’s take 50 percent off the top for overhead. Do any Sensible Talk readers know any reporters over at the AP who are getting paid $1.25 a word?”
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Another remarkably ill-informed screed against the Media Bloggers Association. I’m surprised to see such poorly researched stuff from Cory Doctorow of all people. Glad Mary Hodder, Liz Sabater and others weighed in via comments to correct misinformation.
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“Now AP wants bloggers to pay — per word! — and to give them credit and to promise not to say anything bad about anybody? (Forgive me for saying so, but that sure sounds more like a muzzle of my free speech than a copyright license.)”
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Great analysis by Mary Hodder on why the recent NYT article about the AP/bloggers flap was not only condescending, but misleading. Amen!
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NYT’s Saul Hansel gets very condescending about bloggers….
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Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers’ Association explanation of what’s happened so far in the AP/Drudge Retort flap. Very opinionated, and I’m skeptical about some things he says, but worth a read if you’re following this case.
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More about how AP is undermining its own business: “If local papers skip the AP, that means the core constituency is in revolt. That will potentially be more corrosive than the fight with the blogosphere over fair use.”
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“What would the world look like without the AP? Local papers can get local content from their own networks and national, international, sports, business and other content via links. They can also enter into cooperatives — which is where the AP started”
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“AP doesn’t get to make its own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. Like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to create property rights that don’t exist today and that they are not legally entitled to.”
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Jarvis to AP: “I don’t give a damn about your guidelines. I have my own.The point of fair use and fair comment is that there can be no set guidelines. AP should start using our linking and quoting guidelines rather than its homogenization practices.”
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“If the AP doesn’t want bloggers quoting their stories, why make RSS feeds available?”
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“Eight of Ohio’s top newspapers are sharing content in a cooperative effort called the Ohio News Organization, or OHNO. The arrangement will allow the papers to sidestep the AP. Could this system be a lifeline for struggling news organizations?”
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Analysis of the legal aspects of the AP/bloggers flap, by a respected law professor: “Unless everyone – the AP and bloggers alike – steps lightly here, copyright law could end up doing a lot of damage to both the blogs and the press. Let me explain .
links for 2008-06-19
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New (and fun) from the Sunlight Foundation: “For every day that Congress is in session, Capitol Words displays the most frequently used word in the Congressional Record.” Today’s word is “health.” Yesterday, “tax.”
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AP won’t let you quote them if you’re going to criticize them. I kid you not. Check out the heading ” Derogatory and Unlawful Uses”
Mars Phoenix Talked to Me!
I love starting the day with this kind of conversation:
Wow, that is so cool!
…Of course, I’m not talking to the real Mars Phoenix lander, but rather to people at the mission’s PR team who are tweeting as if they’re the lander — via the account MarsPhoenix. A June 12 FCW.com article explained:
“Rhea Borja, Media Relations Officer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory… came up with the idea to create a feed on Twitter, a microblogging Web site, to help attract a younger group of space enthusiasts. …It worked. ‘The people who are following the Mars Phoenix Twitter, they’re people who don’t typically read air and space stories or follow missions,’ Borja said. ‘It’s like a whole new world for them –– literally.’
“The lander’s personality comes from Veronica McGregor, manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Media Relations Office. She set up the feed a few weeks before Phoenix, which was launched in August 2007, landed on Mars on May 25.
“The plan was to set up a blog to update people about Phoenix’s progress, but that involves a lot of people and can be very time-consuming, McGregor said. A blog was still set up, but Borja’s idea to use Twitter seemed like the ideal way to give people up-to-the-minute information, McGregor said. ‘The great thing about Twitter is that you don’t have to be in front of the computer to get updates. You can get them on your cell phone wherever you are,’ Borja said. ‘So, I thought, how cool would that be if you were out and about with friends and you’re having dinner and getting the countdown of the spacecraft [to its landing]?’
This is one of the smartest uses of Twitter for public outreach I’ve ever seen — giving folks a sense of a personal connection to this high-tech mission to find water (and signs of life) on Mars. (Some members of the Phoenix team are also blogging.) I especially like that Mars Phoenix is replying to questions sent in by its Twitter friends (like me).
Makes it all seem so much less… alien!
In the past, I’ve railed against “character blogs” as stupidly inauthentic. I think it’s counterproductive to maintain the ruse of a false persona in the blog format, unless posts are very short. But for a space mission, “character tweets” from the spacecraft seem like a brilliant fit.
I’m not sure why the difference in length of posts and the nature of the medium makes a difference, but to me it does. Need to mull this over. Thoughts?
links for 2008-06-16
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Cool service for mapping and sharing bike routes around the world
My cool red laptop case
Lately, nearly everywhere I go people remark on my transparent red plastic laptop case. It does look pretty cool, I think. It’s just two clear pieces of plastic that snap on easily, with cutouts for ports. (However, if you want to pull out your battery, you’ll need to pop off the case.)
The anodized aluminum of the Macbook Pro is notoriously easy to scratch, and difficult to clean off sticker gunk from. I like laptop stickers, and change them from time to time. (Oh, if you’re looking for cool stickers, go to Sticker Giant.)
My hardcase is by Speck Products, which makes it for several Mac laptop models (including the Air) in several colors. For a 15″ Macbook Pro, cost is $49.95 plus shipping You can buy it directly from Speck or through Amazon.com and other online vendors.
Today I see they’ve just released a purple model. That’s the color I wanted in the first place. But the red has kind of grown on me, I think I’ll stick with it.
Homophobia: Nuclear option of online debate
This pretty much says it all:
Thanks to Kirby Ferguson for the tip.
links for 2008-06-14
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“Community news” in terms of geography is a print construct that has proven it fails to translate to digital media. The Internet allows people to form their own communities of interest unbounded by geography.
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Fair criticism, I think: “I do wish Poynter would put the articles and the comments together, instead of having them on separate pages.”
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Lots of very cool media & technology projects, with links to project web sites.
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“SMS: powerful tool for community organizing, but repressive governments have gotten good at disabling SMS around elections to help block protests. P2P phone comms could allow activist uses for phones with little control by central authorities.”