Cody Taylor

Barence writes “Google CEO Eric Schmidt has hit back at newspaper bosses, warning them that they risk alienating readers in their war against news aggregators such as Google News. ‘I would encourage everybody to think in terms of what your reader wants,’ Schmidt said at a conference for the Newspaper Association of America. ‘These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more.’ Schmidt’s rebuke follows a sustained attack on Google by newspaper bosses such as Rupert Murdoch, who have accused the search giant of ‘stealing’ their content without payment.” Schmidt also suggested that newspapers need to expand their distribution methods to make better use of mobile technology, and a NY Times piece argues that the Associated Press’ struggle against aggregators is futile since they’re largely trying to give news stories to consumers for free anyway.

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Hodejo1 writes “Steve Jobs vowed weeks ago that when iTunes shifted to a tiered price structure in April, older tracks priced at {content}.69 would outnumber the contemporary hits that are rising to .29. Today, several weeks later, iTunes made the transition. While the .29 tracks are immediately visible, locating cheaper tracks is proving to be an exercise in futility. With the exception of 48 songs that Apple has placed on the iTunes main page, {content}.69 downloads are a scarce commodity. MP3 Newswire tried to methodically drill down to unearth more of them only to find: 1) A download like Heart’s 34-year-old song Barracuda went up to .29, not down. 2) Obscure ’90s Brit pop and ’50s rockabilly artists — those most likely to benefit from a price drop — remained at {content}.99. 3) Collected tracks from a cross-section of 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s artists all remained at {content}.99. Finally, MP3 Newswire called up tracks in the public domain from an artist named Ada Jones who first recorded in 1893 on Edison cylinder technology. The price on all of the century-old, public-domain tracks remained at {content}.99. (The same tracks are available for free on archive.org.) The scarcity of lower-priced tracks may reflect the fact that the labels themselves decide which price tier they want to pursue for a given artist; and they are mostly ignoring the lower tier. Meanwhile, Amazon’s UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ({content}.42).”

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Slartibartfast was one of many readers sending in news of GM’s partnership with Segway to develop a two-seater urban electric vehicle. It’s called the Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, or “PUMA.” This is just a prototype, so don’t get your credit card out yet. Its total cost of ownership could be about 1/4 that of a traditional car, GM says. The prototype runs for 35 miles, at a top speed of 35 mph, on lithium-ion batteries. It features the now-familiar Segway balancing technology, though fore-and-aft training wheels are visible on the prototype. Some commentators have likened it to a high-tech rickshaw, others to a golf cart. Engadget describes how the ride feels.

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An anonymous reader writes “Reacting to allegedly fraudulent election procedures, students are storming the presidency and parliament of the small eastern European country of Moldova. It is reported that they used Twitter to organize. Currently twitter and blogs are being used to spread word of what is happening since all national news websites have been blocked. If the 1989 Romanian revolution was the first to be televised, is this the first to be led by twitter and social networks?” Jamie points out this interesting presentation (from March 2008) by Ethan Zuckerman about the realities of online activism, including how governments try to constrain it.

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An anonymous reader writes “Reacting to allegedly fraudulent election procedures, students are storming the presidency and parliament of the small eastern European country of Moldova. It is reported that they used Twitter to organize. Currently twitter and blogs are being used to spread word of what is happening since all national news websites have been blocked. If the 1989 Romanian revolution was the first to be televised, is this the first to be lead by twitter and social networks?” Jamie points out this interesting presentation (from March 2008) by Ethan Zuckerman about the realities of online activism, including how governments try to constrain it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes “The Associated Press is starting to feel the bite of the economic recession and said on Monday that they will ‘work with portals and other partners who legally license our content and will seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don’t.’ They are talking about everything from search engines to aggregators that link to news articles and some sites that reproduce the whole news article. The article notes that in Europe legislative action has blocked Google from using news articles from some outlets similar to what was discussed here last week.”

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In this article we’ll see another example about the FTPMicro and Microchip TCP/IP stack use. In particular the TCP client will be used to visualize in a LCD display the latest news, directly from the BBC site.

CNet is reporting that Sony Pictures may be in talks with YouTube to license full length movies to the video sharing site. Set to post nearly a half a billion dollars in losses this year, YouTube could certainly use some juice to combat sites like NBC-owned Hulu which already has an array of movies for streaming. “sources familiar with the negotiations told CNET News. Details about what a final agreement could look like are sparse, but any partnership between the two powerhouses would likely benefit both. Representatives from both companies declined to comment. Word of the negotiations comes a week after Disney announced it had licensed short-form content to YouTube. Those clips will come from a range of Disney brands, including ABC and ESPN. For YouTube, obtaining short-form clips from Disney is an important step but still doesn’t provide what YouTube needs most.”

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According to a recent report, 97 of the top 100 classified sites are just localized versions of Craigslist, up from 88 just last year. Combine that with a massive rise in traffic to classified sites in general and you have a recipe for one raging behemoth. “Craigslist isn’t just crushing the newspaper industry and crowding out other classified sites. It’s also taking an increasing slice of total U.S Internet traffic: the site’s market share in February was up 90% year over year, accounting for about 2.5% of total US Web site visits.”

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Hugh Pickens writes to mention that Italian scientist Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, recently gave warning about an earthquake that was to happen on March 29th of this year near L’Aquilla. Based on radon gas emissions and a series of observed tremors he tried to convince residents to evacuate, drawing much criticism from the city’s mayor and others. Giuliani was forced to take down warnings he had posted on the internet. The researcher had said that a ‘disastrous’ earthquake would strike on March 29, but when it didn’t, Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, last week officially denounced Giuliani in court for false alarm. ‘These imbeciles enjoy spreading false news,’ Bertalaso was quoted as saying. ‘Everyone knows that you can’t predict earthquakes.’ Giuliani, it turns out, was partially right. A much smaller seismic shift struck on the day he said it would, with the truly disastrous one arriving just one week later. ‘Someone owes me an apology,’ said Giuliani, who is also a resident of L’Aquila. ‘The situation here is dramatic. I am devastated, but also angry.'”

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