In the debate on the future of journalism, bloggers say, "We have a better economic model. The future is digital, and we are the future, so whatever we do is right." Traditional journalists, mourning a passing world, say, "We defined how journalism works, and everyone should adhere to that model, even if it won't work economically." This is a gross simplification of the arguments flying back and forth. But sadly, it is a dialogue of the deaf. Neither party seems to want to listen or learn from the other.
When it comes to eReaders, Amazon's Kindle is obviously the largest player in the U.S., with Sony's eReader being a distant second. A few days ago, though, we got a chance to talk to Hans Brons, the CEO of iRex. IRex is a company worth watching closely, as it is a spin-off from the e-ink research group at Philips that developed the screen technology that is being used by most current generation eBook readers. Philips decided that it didn't want to pursue this line of research in 2005 and decided to license the technology to other vendors.
According to spam-filtration service BotKiller, Twitter spam comprises up to 3.69 percent of all tweets.
They've been working on a solution to cleanse the stream of Twitter spam; their new product tags and blocks computer-generated tweets with a minimal margin of false positives. BotKiller is a product of Rarefied Technologies, an open-source company that implements advanced algorithmic classification for enterprise applications.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, Twitter plans to target a handful of large corporations currently using the service to generate its first revenue this year.
While he would not release exact sales figures, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was quoted in the post as saying, "The idea is if they are getting value out of Twitter, then we could add more value to what they are doing and we could get some revenue... We think we'll get to something this year, however simple, that shows we're making some money."
According to a new report from Cambridge University (PDF), students aren't interested in being able to read eBooks and eJournals on their mobile phones. Instead, users are far more interested in opening hours, location maps, contact info, and access to the library catalog. Most respondents were also far more interested in getting alerts by text message than being able to use library resources over the mobile web.
Network analysts Renesys reported this morning that the global effort to supply proxy internet servers for Iranians to route around government control and communicate with the outside world is slowing down and facing increasingly effective state repression. The company mapped two thousand proxy servers shared on Twitter and other web sites over the course of the last week and found that it truly has been a global effort.
It can't be assumed that all the proxies were created to support Iranian protesters, but they were probably all shared for that purpose. Renesys reports that the rate of proxy creation appears to have slumped dramatically over the last few days and newly shared proxies are now being added quickly to the official list of filtered destinations online. This could have consequences for the political movement's global visibility and underlines how important it is for everyday people to create proxies and share them with friends overseas ahead of time.
The aftermath of Iran's election last week was startling. From the eyebrow-raising lopsided vote tally, to the surge of protesters into the streets, to the pivotal role of tools like mobile phones, Twitter, and YouTube in getting the story out, it's hard to say what's been the most remarkable.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering to monitor blogs for undisclosed sponsored blog posts. According to the FTC, bloggers who don't disclose that they received freebies once these new rules go into effect could become the target on an FTC investigation. These new guidelines (PDF), possibly with modifications, will most likely go into effect later this summer, and would mark the first time that the FTC tries to patrol the blogosphere.
A few days ago, Yahoo! released a new version of their browser toolbar and this time, they've made it available for Firefox users, too, albeit in a beta format. Previously, the new Yahoo! Toolbar was an IE-only download which delivered an integrated search box and links to Yahoo-owned sites and applications. Now the toolbar introduces some new features like "Site Previews" and faster search courtesy of Inquisitor. There's only one problem with the software (besides the fact that toolbars in and of themselves are incredibly passé): it doesn't work on Windows 7.
If you're wondering where all the Push Notification-enabled iPhone apps are, you're not alone. Many of the most highly anticipated applications designed to work in iPhone's OS 3.0 have not yet had their updated versions approved. On the list of overdue apps are AIM, IM+, Beejive IM, and ESPN ScoreCenter to name a few. And who knows how many lesser-known and brand-new applications are still sitting in limbo!
So what's the reason for the delay? One iPhone application developer has his suspicions. He's discovered what appears to be an issue with Apple's Feedback service and is now questioning if this, and not the backlog of new app approvals, is what's causing the holdup.
