|
by Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
April
26, 2002
Quick blog
today. Two days of civic duty took a big bite out of my work week, and
I'm playing catch-up.
MasterCard
Change Threatens Companies Such as PayPal.
"America's No. 2 credit card company plans to stop its 15,000 member
banks and credit unions from processing MasterCard transactions from third-party
credit card processing services — services such as PayPal and Yahoo's
PayDirect." This hits home if you're an eBay user: PayPal's instant
payments are a boon to buyers, who don't have to buy money orders or wait
for their checks to clear before their purchases are shipped, and to sellers,
who get paid quickly without hearing, "The check is in the mail."
May 1 is the date the change is to take effect. I found this at poynter.org,
the site of a professional development nonprofit for journalists, but
I have seen very
little elsewhere about it. My email query to PayPal, identifying myself
as a journalist, resulted in an extremely annoying automatic reply. ("In
an effort to assist you as quickly and efficiently as possible, please
direct all customer service inquires through our website. " Blah
blah blah) Visa and American Express contemplate no such lockout.
Free Mozilla
browser almost ready for prime time:
After four years of cooperative development by hundreds of programmers,
many of them volunteers, this free, open-source, nonprofit child of Netscape
has released Release Candidate 1.0, the last step before a full-fledged
v. 1.0 release. I've tried the browser, and I like it (you may download
it at mozilla.org), but I'm waiting
for the official release before I switch for good. I like the way it was
developed, and trust it that it's not trying to grab my personal info
or sell me something I don't want. Some of its features are described
in The
Browser That Roared, a good introduction from Time.
The fight
for the future (continued):
• Hackers
turn tables on file-swapping firms: First
there were software applications, relatives of Napster, and RIAA cried
foul because they allowed uses to swap music without buying it. Now some
of these applications that tried to make a buck by forcing ads on users
find themselves the target of hackers who have "liberated" their
file-swapping software, offering versions without ads. Among them is Kazaa,
whose ad-free knockoff, KazaaLite, is widely available. Wired
reports, "Kazaa, the largest file-trading network running, has a new
business plan that includes a subscription service, audio and video media
advertising and an offshore tax haven."
• Tuesday
we reported on a story in Salon about '60s psychedelic musician Joe
Byrd, who has written to the Napster judge about his lack of royalties
from Sony. Also in Salon is a
Letter by Tom Meek
of Gainesville, Fla., who remembers the band, Joe Byrd & the Field
Hippies and the United States of America, and one album in particular:
"The American Metaphysical Circus was a landmark psychedelic
record of its (1969) time, and I still own a sealed copy of the LP in
addition to my "play" copy and the CD." It's an interesting, detailed
reminiscence.
Up from
the ashes: The
revival of the Library of Alexandria The renowned Bibliotheca Alexandrina,
center of culture and learning of the ancient world, has been rebuilt
-- in Egypt and online (10 billion Web pages and a movie archive). Alexandria
native Omar
Sharif narrates the digital tour. Here's an excerpt from the Wired
story: "Historians quibble over details of the original library's
demise. Various researchers claim that Julius Caesar burned it in 48 B.C.,
that Augustus Caesar destroyed it in his pursuit of Mark Antony, that
early Christian monks burned it in 391, that Muslim zealots decimated
it in 642. In short, the place was doomed. It contained too much knowledge
that offended too many people."
April
24-25, 2002
Jury
duty.
April
23, 2002
Freely
distributed news network: It's a barebones process,
the realtime output of writers and editors spewing onto the Web in chronological
order. Headlines
from the New York Times displays straightforward descriptions and
bylines of stories as they enter UserLand's
content management system (weblog publishing and hosting, no coding knowledge
required). There's no front page, no section fronts, no order of importance,
it's all chronological, as the wires have always been. Participating blogs
are the neo-paperboys and -girls.
Click on
one of these headlines to read the full text of the story on the Times
site, where registration is required. But the built-in tendency of
the Net to route around obstacles has spit up a Javascript workaround
for even that: the New
York Times Random Login Generator. This form page is already filled
out, except for the URL of a Times story: If I were to paste one in and
click on a button labeled "Register and go!," it would instantly
register me and whisk me to the story. My randomly generated persona is
a 31-year-old housewife and entrepreneur from Jordan (the country) who
never reads the Times and wants all the marketing emails sent to her gobbledygook
address. (There go the marketing demographics!)
On Gates
on Windows: Userland CEO Dave Winer
on Microsoft CEO Gates' testimony during a hearing to determine what penalties
Microsoft will pay for its violation of antitrust laws: "Here are
some facts. 1. MS has the dominant Web browser. 2. They got there illegally.
They were convicted. 3. We're in the penalty phase now. My belief: The
conviction was the correct result. Now they must come up with a penalty
that is appropriate, that will prevent Microsoft and future would-be Microsofts
from using a monopoly in one technology to gain a monopoly in another.
To allow juggernauts like Netscape a little breathing room to learn and
make mistakes before they have to deal with a monopoly that acts willfully
to cut off their air supply. To make Microsoft a better platform vendor,
with more developers, with more new ideas being tried out. To help developers
and their investors trust the market, without illegal and unethical interference
from Microsoft."
In the same
page, Winer points to a story headlined "Skeptics
ask: Did Gates lie?" on Bellevue, Wash.-based eastsidejournal.com,
just down the road from Microsoft's Redmond headquarters. There's a comprehensive
package
on the Microsoft trial at Yahoo drawn from many sources.
The fight
for the future (continued):
"Musician to Napster judge: Let my music go; A 1960s-era recording
artist says he can't get Sony to pay royalties, so his psychedelic pop
might as well be free"
California
music history professor Joseph Byrd wrote to Marilyn Hall Patel, the federal
judge overseeing the record labels' lawsuit against Napster for copyright
infringement, detailing how Sony had paid him composer's fees but not
a penny of artist royalties during the decades since he released two psychedelic
albums, Damien Cave reports today in Salon.
More from
Byrd's letter: "The record companies' representation that they are
legitimate agents for their artists is false... Therefore, allowing them
to collect fees in our behalf does not serve the public interest. I personally
would prefer to allow my music to be freely shared, to the present situation,
in which only the corporations stand to gain."
Tacky:
"Florida
company creating trading card series portraying Sept. 11 victims"
And some 20 bereaved families are co-operating by supplying biographical
info and photos of the deceased.
April
22, 2002
Media
populism: From
today's Washington Post: "The exotic, impassioned, sometimes
inscrutable protest tribes are back in Washington, and a horde of media
people is tracking their every move. It turns out there are two media
tribes. One is familiar -- the tribe getting paid to be here, which includes
CBS, CNN, The Washington Post, etc. That's the "corporate media," not
a complimentary term, according to members of the other tribe. This second
group includes the ones running around with tiny digital video cameras,
looking as if they're making home movies... They represent something called
the Independent Media Center (IMC), a kind of global volunteer newsroom
that exists primarily on the Internet, offering proudly biased fare that
its advocates say compensates for the blind spots of the mainstream media."
(Sounds like weblogs, doesn't it?) Each local IMC has its own Web
site, and there is an umbrella Web site at www.indymedia.org.
The Washington IMC's Web address, with many reports from the protests,
is www.dc.indymedia.org.
Ironically,
we heard about all this from the mainstream media.
NASA
photo
When I was small, no photos like this existed; humans had never gotten
far enough off the earth to photograph the whole planet. The Apollo
17 crew shot this photo in December, 1972.
Larger image |
Early
birds identified: "Big-Eyed
Birds Sing Early Songs: Dawn chorus explained" is the headline
on the Science News story that finally fingers the first birds to wake
you at the crack of dawn. They're the ones with the biggest eyes, like
robins,
who can see well in low light. Somehow, I think the Indians and others
who can readily identify
birdsong have known this for a long time.
Bledsoe
to Buffalo: What the receiving end thinks. Here's today's Buffalo
News sports page. The lead story, headlined "Bills
catch a star in Bledsoe," includes, "The deal represents
the Bills' biggest trade in at least 15 years, since they acquired linebacker
Cornelius Bennett in 1987." (Context for those not from here: "Almost
nine years to the day after Bill Parcells took the 21-year-old Drew Bledsoe
with the first pick in the 1993 NFL Draft, the (New England) Patriots
shipped Bledsoe to the Buffalo Bills in exchange for the Bills first-round
pick in the 2003 draft." -- Providence
Journal story)
Good idea
not happening here: Rock
'n' Roll Camp for Girls. "The 2002 Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls
is a day camp for girls, age 8-18, to learn the basics of creating and
playing rock 'n' roll music on their instrument of choice -- vocals, drums,
electric guitar or bass." Unfortunately, it's in Portland, Ore. Tuition
for the 125 girls between 8 and 18 at the weeklong Rock 'n' Roll Camp
for Girls 2002 is $50.00 -- the $1,000 actual cost is underwritten by
donations to the nonprofit that runs the sessions. Here are photos
from last year's camp. If you want to help them out, you can donate
online via PayPal.
"Wireless
Wins at MIT eBusiness Awards": "In its annual ode to
enterprise technology innovation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
honored eBay as the Business of the Year and named the founder of wireless
networking firm Atheros Communications its Innovator of the Year at its
2002 eBusiness Awards." Other winners:
-- Rookie
of the Year: Orbitz,
the online travel reservation site, for its proprietary fare-finding technology.
-- Social Responsibility: Grameen
Bank (Slogan: Banking for the Poor), which is using technology to
provide micro-credit loans to villagers in rural Bangladesh.
-- MIT Students' Choice: Google.com,
for its leading search-engine technology.
Love the
bod you've got: The 5th annual Love
Your Body Day will be Wednesday, Oct. 16, and the NOW foundation has
a poster contest going: "The National Organization for Women Foundation
is hosting a poster design contest as a part of the Love Your Body Campaign
2002. We are looking for innovative responses to the onslaught of negative
images that impact women's and girls' health. A visual answer to advertisers
who attempt to link smoking, drinking, and dieting to women's liberation,
thinness, glamour, and self worth. The campaign will fight back against
the use of starvation images, and all of the industries that profit from
women's dissatisfaction with their bodies. Posters can be graphically
attractive and/or simply use a dynamic message." The grand prize winner's
design will be the campaign poster, and there are prizes for winners in
four categories: $100 for elementary students, $200 for high school students,
$400 for college students and nonstudents (open competition). May 20 is
the deadline for entries. Details at nowfoundation.org.
Scripps
package embargoed till Reagan's death -- but you can read it now.
News organizations routinely write obits and remembrances, lacking only
the date, place and cause of death, while their subjects are still living.
That's how well-researched and coherent tributes appear within moments
of a luminary's passing. But they usually don't publish them while the
subject it still living; it's another way the Web has changed the world.
Geek U.:
"Web services" is a buzzing phrase. Here's a primer: Will
Web services be the savior of the computing industry?
Back
issues: Week one
Back
issues: Week two
Back
issues: Week three
Back
issues: Weeks four and five
Subterranean Homepage
News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
|
