mediaeater

MST, AP propose news microformat The Media Standards Trust has today (Friday 10 July) called on news organisations to adopt consistent news formats for online content. The call comes as The Associated Press and the Media Standards Trust launch a new proposed news microformat. The new proposed microformat, created by AP in association with the Trust, effectively encapsulates content and metadata so that critical information about every news story is available, including: • what the story is about, • where it was written, • who wrote it, • where it was published, • the news principles it adheres to (if any), and • any usage rights associated with it. - mediaeater

"Sum Up Your Leadership in Six Words" - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"Twitter has two key attributes that can make for effective social search: real-time data and a critical mass of users that can eventually facilitate more specialized, vertical communities of experts. On this point, I have a fundamental belief that the web is moving more vertical in its next iteration. The benefit of real-time data is that it can bring contextual relevancy (e.g traffic, sales, event updates) in a way that is difficult or impossible for automated algorithms or archival databases to do. If Twitter can organize itself into specialized expert communities, it provides a differentiated approach to search. The future of search is likely to embrace all three of the modalities I described to maximize relevancy in context. Imagine a search engine that organizes results in those three ways: a Google-like automated popularity-based result, a set of responses from a network of human experts, and the results from a well-edited database. The bottom line is that simultaneously... more... - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"News Corp faces growing storm over phone-hacking allegations By Ben Fenton in London and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in,New York Published: July 10 2009 03:00 | Last updated: July 10 2009 03:00 British politicians, police officers and senior News Corp executives were yesterday drawn into inquiries over the alleged hacking of high-profile figures' mobile telephones by journalists for some of Rupert Murdoch's UK newspapers. The Information Commissioner's Office, which monitors privacy and access to official information in the UK, said that 31 journalists working for The News of the World and The Sun had paid investigators to obtain personal information through "blagging" - impersonating the target of a journalistic investigation. After a brief inquiry, London police said there was no need for further investigation into claims by The Guardian newspaper that "two to three thousand" public figures' phones may have been accessed, as no additional information had come to light. A 2007... more... - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo plans to file a lawsuit against social-networking Internet site Tagged.com, accusing the privately held company of using deceptive email marketing practices and invasion of privacy. "This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo said." - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

Today, we're launching a feature on Image Search to help you find images that you can use for free, while respecting the wishes of artists and creators. This feature allows you to restrict your Image Search results to images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons, making it easier to discover images from across the web that you can share, use and even modify. Your search will also include works that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain. - mediaeater

Under the deal, TuneCore will support new Web sites for Universal that will host uploaded songs from unsigned artists. Universal is the world's largest recording company and a unit of France's Vivendi SA. TuneCore financial backer Guitar Center has also agreed to sell Universal and TuneCore CDs at more than 200 of its retail stores in the United State - mediaeater

"The list of the smartphone’s shortcomings is dwindling, however, as some of the latest navigation applications offer voice navigation and take advantage of the phone’s always-connected state to offer real-time traffic updates, directions to contacts in the phone’s address book and more. Moreover, at $100 to $300 apiece after carrier subsidies, smartphones are competitively priced with GPS units, which average about $177, according to the research firm NPD Group. Some tech-savvy smartphone owners find that the GPS capabilities of their phones are good enough for ordinary use." - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

trial. But some say that Jones's decision about IP addresses is inconsistent with other recent opinions about the issue. Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, points out that the European Union considers IP addresses to be personal information. Last year, the EU said that search engines should expunge users' IP addresses as soon as possible. - mediaeater

"Social networkers' feelings about brands online in general are more positive than the researchers thought they would be. Some 52% of social networkers had friended or become a fan of at least one brand. When asked if seeing a brand on a social network makes them feel positive or negative about that brand, an almost-equal 17% said positive and 19% said negative. The other 64% were neutral or didn't care. When asked if they would like more communications from brands, 45% were neutral, while 20% said yes and 35% said no. Anderson conducted the study online in June with 5,000 demographically representative respondents, and then went in-depth with 1,250 of them. With the help of Mr. Anderson and his team, Ad Age dug into the reams of stats to create the mini profiles below." - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"For the second week, the real action in music sales was to be found on Billboard’s catalog album chart, for albums released more than 18 months ago: the top 10 slots were occupied by records featuring Michael Jackson, and two of Mr. Jackson’s albums outsold the No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart. According to data from Nielsen SoundScan, Mr. Jackson’s “Number Ones” sold 339,000 copies and “Thriller” sold 187,000 for the week ending July 5. (Each album sold just over 100,000 copies in the week ending June 28, three days after Mr. Jackson’s death.) By comparison, the top album on the Billboard 200 chart, the 31st installment of the “Now That’s What I Call Music!” compilation series, sold 169,261 units. Among the more unusual beneficiaries of the Jackson sales boom, Agence France-Presse reported, has been the Dutch pension fund ABP, which in 2008 purchased the rights to several of Mr. Jackson’s songs, including “Remember the Time” and “You Are Not Alone.” The top five positions on... more... - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"With the most recent CRTC public notice about traffic management, the language has against shifted to network neutrality, privacy, and drawn DPI appliances back into the spotlight. The CBC has put up an article that gives a nice overview of the present situation of this notice, and what each of the players are looking to get out of the proceeding. What is distinctly different between the present hearing and the CAIP v Bell hearing, is that advocates of network neutrality can try to leverage the language that ISPs used during the New Media hearing a few months ago to demonstrate that ISPs are not presenting a coherent position on DPI to the CRTC. What remains unchanged, of course, is that Sandvine continues to assert that network neutrality simply doesn’t exist, with Juniper Networks maintaining that there is a qualitative different between the Internet of the past, and the Internet of the present and future. The hearings will be continuing for the next few days. CIPPIC is live... more... - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work." - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"Certainly the recession is contributing to fewer sales, but the top 10 of the first half of 2009 features only one new artist, Lady GaGa. (See top 10 chart) Counting compact discs, vinyl LPs and downloaded albums, the tally for the first 26 weeks of the year is at 174.5 million units, down from 204.6 million in the first half of '08. Last year's figures were down 11% from 2007. Four years ago, the first 26 weeks saw sales of 298.4 million albums; this year's tally is down a staggering 42% from 2005. While the appetite for individual albums continues to decline, the sales of individual downloads continues to rise. In the first half of the year, 613 million tracks have been sold, a 13% spike from 2008's 514.7 million tracks." - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

A deal would mark the latest in a string of investments made by pension funds and private equity firms into high profile music assets. Investors are attracted by catalogs of published songs that provide steady, recurring cash flows. Reports of a deal were earlier published in the German press, which speculated that such a venture could look for acquisition targets such as EMI Group's music publishing assets. EMI is owned by British private equity firm Terra Firma. A source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday that KKR would invest 50 million euros to finance near-term growth and would commit to invest an additional 200 million euros over the next five years to finance possible acquisitions. - mediaeater

"A deal would mark the latest in a string of investments made by pension funds and private equity firms into high profile music assets. Investors are attracted by catalogs of published songs that provide steady, recurring cash flows. Reports of a deal were earlier published in the German press, which speculated that such a venture could look for acquisition targets such as EMI Group's music publishing assets. EMI is owned by British private equity firm Terra Firma. A source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday that KKR would invest 50 million euros to finance near-term growth and would commit to invest an additional 200 million euros over the next five years to finance possible acquisitions." - mediaeater from Bookmarklet

"—Large pureplay webcasters: Pay the greater of either a per performance rate or 25 percent of total revenue; agree to provide “more comprehensive reporting” about the sound recordings used than currently required. —Small pureplay webcasters (those earning $1.25 million or less in total revenues with a cap on music streamed): Through 2014, they will have the option of paying the greater of a percentage of revenue or a percentage of expenses, and “in certain circumstances” can have less stringent reporting requirements in exchange for a “proxy fee.” That option could keep the paperwork down, something that can be intense for smaller operations. —Pureplay webcasters that provide bundled, syndicated or subscription services: Will pay per-performance fees that are the same as those contained in an agreement cocluded earlier in the year by SoundExchange with the National Association of Broadcasters." - mediaeater from Bookmarklet