J.O.B.: “There are news and weather channels all over the U.S., and about 16 abroad. This is a news junkie
’s dream. Check it out. The only thing that could make this better is a way to embed this on a blog.”
LiveNewsCameras.com (BETA) April 24, 2008
Communism Officially Takes over the Internet April 23, 2008
With only 17% of its population online, China now has more users online than any other country, including the U.S.. We know these Chinese internet users aren’t watching YouTube, right? So what are they doing? The USA Today report cites internet communications and gaming. That’s not the only thing that’s going on online, however…
Academic Search Engines Fight ‘Google Effect’ April 22, 2008
Wendy Wallace: A digital treasure trove of information is out there for the taking, but only if students have a means of discovering the way to find it – a search engine that is both academic and user-friendly.
Scores of academic search engines provide a heavyweight alternative to the commercial ones and work against what Brighton University’s professor of media- Tara Brabazon has termed “the Google effect” – a tendency towards mediocrity.
The challenge they face is to make themselves sufficiently user-friendly to attract and retain a generation of students reared on commercial search engines…
..and Tech was it’s STRONG point! April 17, 2008
ReadWriteWeb: Is it time to accept that Digg is no longer an equivalent to Slashdot, and that it is as much a mainstream news site as say BusinessWeek or People magazine? I’m sure that’s what Digg management want us (and their potential buyers!) to think. Judging by these stats, they make a good case. But at what cost? Is Digg’s audience growing, or stagnating as its core techie audience goes elsewhere to sites like Mixx, Reddit, Hacker News and maybe even back to Slashdot?
Real People Don’t Have Time For Social Media April 17, 2008
Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb: Let’s be honest here: we’re all a bunch of social media addicts. We’re junkies. Whether it’s a new Twitter app, a new Facebook feature, or a new social anything service, we’re all over it. But we may not be the norm. The truth is, being involved in social media takes time, something that most people don’t have a lot of. So how can regular folk get involved with social media? And how much time does it really take?
I’ve been Splogged?! April 17, 2008
Wired: Why do sploggers do it? How do you know if you’ve been splogged? And what can you do to stop it? Here are a few tips.
Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best? April 15, 2008
Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox 3, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 duke it out to be the program you use most on your PC.
Congress House Subcommittee Holds Hearing in Second Life April 8, 2008
On the real-world end, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) probably got the best quips out, joking that some people already think Congress is a virtual world, and that Markey was throwing the event merely to learn how to get to the next level in World of Warcraft.
The invite-only event was a bit less chaotic than the time, a couple of years ago, when Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia, made a Second Life appearance and virtual participants floated across the room, apparently unable to control their avatars.
Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’ April 2, 2008
Noah Shachtman: “A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested ‘clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers’.”
“Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.
“This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy,” offers a third approach…”
The Best Laptops Under $1000 March 27, 2008
PC World: You can easily get 2GB of memory, 120GB or more of hard disk space, 802.11b/g wireless networking, and dedicated multimedia shortcut keys that let you watch DVDs or view documents without booting into Windows. The Acer and Dell laptops in our list even sported HDMI connections, extras we didn’t expect at this price point.
