Google's bid for open wireless

Two years ago, Google partnered with Earthlink to offer a plan for San Francisco to provide free wireless access without dipping into the municipal budget. The City bit and today, San Franciscan's are still waiting for their wifi. Rumor has it that the deal has been killed by Earthlink, but according to a recent Guardian article Google's interest in wireless internet is still very much alive.

As part of the Coalition for 4G that also includes Intel, Skype and Yahoo, Google has successfully lobbied the FCC to change the way a portion of the airwaves are sold.… Read more

RUNtv: Taking internet video and putting it on Cable Television

Are you a videoblogger, a You Tuber, filmmaker, or a video journalist? If so, check out RUNtv, a new television show on peralta.TV that I have been developing for the past few months. The two-hour weekly show features short form videos from all genres and provide an opportunity for you to get paid for your work.

Viewers and visitors each week will be invited to vote on their favorites, and we will be giving out cash grants to the top three videos every episode. First place gets $250, second $100 and the third place film will receive $50. Our … Read more

Google News adds unique commenting feature

For anyone who's ever been quoted in a newspaper, you've likely read over the article with great anticipation only to conclude that the reporter completely missed the mark, or at least neglected something you feel is important to your story. It's human nature. Unfortunately, there isn't much you or the news agency can do to clarify and remedy the miscommunication. Sure, newspapers can, and do, print corrections, but only when there is a factual error in the story, and they hardly rectify the situation. While not a perfect solution, the folks at Google News have recently begun soliciting comments from participants and subjects covered by the news report.

… Read more

America on a media diet?

Today's Boston Herald reports that Americans consumed less media in 2006 than they did the year before. Are we losing interest in media or are we just becoming more efficient consumers?

… Read more

Can Web 2.0 tap into the truth behind the mining disaster?

A Murray Energy Corporation coal mine in Utah collapsed Monday morning leaving six miners trapped. Two days later rescuers still haven't been able to reach the trapped miners, and though they anticipate making contact within the next two days it's uncertain these efforts will be successful and if anyone will be alive when the rescuers find the miners. Meanwhile, a growing controversy has developed around what caused the mine to collapse, the safety of the operation and the illegitimacy of news reports on the story.

… Read more

Is your hairdresser a journalist?

Asking if your hairdresser is a journalist may seem a bit absurd, but the reality is that for many people a trip to the salon is also an opportunity to pick up the latest dirt on who's dating who and other town gossip. We don't usually think of gossip as being journalistic; however, many newspapers have a reporter on staff whose primary duty is to share gossip. Most everyone would consider him or her to be a journalist so why is the idea of your stylist being a journalist considered such a radical idea?

With a Federal Shield law having recently made it out of committee in the House, a debate has flared over who should be protected under the law. A recent amendment to the Shield Law states that only those who benefit financially from their journalism are covered; those who provide the news as a labor of love are excluded. While many of the journalist organizations have applauded this compromise, I think it's important to look at who is excluded and how journalism is an activity that should be protected by a far larger contingent than those qualified under the proposed law.

… Read more

Two Senators seek to save Internet radio

As Engadget recently reported , senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) have pledged to move forward with the Internet Radio Equality Act when Congress returns in the fall unless the industry is able to forge a solution amenable to webcasters. In a press release issued August 2, the senators offer their analysis of the situation:The fact is online radio services do not have enough revenue to support what will amount to unprecedented royalties. The $500 per channel minimum fee alone will deliver an over $1 billion annual windfall to record companies, a windfall that is not justified by any business or equity considerations.… Read more

Federal shield law clears committee in House

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee approved an amended version of the Free Flow of Information Act. If passed, the act would shield reporters from having to testify about information they obtained through their journalistic activities. This significant step toward passing a shield law comes one year from the day I was escorted out of a Federal court room and held in civil contempt for asserting a journalist privilege.

As CNET reports, In response to concerns raised by the Bush administration and other politicians, the revised bill attempts to exclude the "casual blogger" from reaping those benefits by stipulating the protections apply only to those who derive "financial gain or livelihood" from the journalistic activity, Boucher said Wednesday. That broad rule could, however, include part-time writers who receive even a trickle of revenue from Google Ads or Blogads.com.

While the revised form of the law is not perfect, it does appear to offer a level of protection against Justice Department inquiries that doesn't currently exist. Although 33 states have some form of shield law, these protections do not apply in a federal context and several U.S. journalists have found themselves imprisoned in recent years as a result.… Read more

Facebook and journalism

First it was Friendster, then it was MySpace; now Facebook seems to be the center of every other conversation on the Internet. Several of the writers at Poynter Online (a resource that puports to be "Everything you need to be a better journalist") have recently been focusing on the possibilities for Facebook in terms of the news business.

In one article Pat Walters reports on how he created the Facebook group, Journalists and Facebook as a sort of experiment. What better way to report on Facebook, than to use Facebook? We invited about 25 journalists to join the group, posted a few questions to the discussion board and waited.

Seemed to make perfect sense.

By the time we posted this story on Poynter Online, the group had mushroomed to more than 800 members, journalists and non-journalists from all over the world. At this moment there are almost 1,800 members, but only 57 wall posts, and 22 discussion threads. In his article, Walters points out that this limited participation in the group isn't unusual and he references an article by Jakob Nielsen to illustrate this phenomena. In his article, Nielsen predicts that only one percent of any given group will create most of the content, and after a cursory glance at the Journalists and Facebook group that estimate appears to be roughly on target.

… Read more