Monday, November 09, 2009

Afiche forum pour envoyer aux membres

ARTS, LA CULTURE et l’ÉDUCATION

FRANCO-CANADIEN

À YELLOWKNIFE

Samedi 14 novembre  9H00-16H00

9H00-12H00 

  • Mot de bienvenue;
  • Déroulement de la journée;
  • Présentation de l’infrastructure des arts et de la culture au
  • Canada français (dont la FCCF);
  • Dossier Arts et Éducation :
  • portrait général des enjeux, b) Sommet en éducation, c) Table nationale en arts et éducation (TAACI), d) Trousse du passeur culturel, e) Tables en art et éducation dans les provinces et territoires;
  • Partage d’informations sur les liens entre arts et éducation aux
  • TNO et les défis.

 

 12H00-13H00 

Buffet froid sur place

      • Musique d’ambiance sur place par des musiciens locaux
      • Lancement du livre Traces de vie par un Collectif Des Ainés TNO

 

13H00-16H00

  • Positionnement des arts et la culture francophone dans l’enseignement et l’éducation
  • Formation d’un comité arts et éducation aux TNO
  •  Vision, mission, rôle des associations et répertoire des ressources culturelles et artistiques aux TNO                
      • Comment les communautés pourraient mieux utiliser les ressources disponibles;        
      • Formation d’un comité de suivis

AFCY Jpeg.JPG

Samedi le14 novembre

Northern United Place


Saturday, November 07, 2009

SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy!

SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy!

Friday, November 06, 2009

Web.ca 's E-mail Service

A very good and low cost text based e-mail syste supplied by a Toronto, Ontatio Canada not-for-profit http://www.web.ca for details

in reference to: Web Networks - Login (view on Google Sidewiki)

Thursday, November 05, 2009

China to ban beating web addicts

China's ministry of health has moved to ban the use of physical punishment
to treat teenagers addicted to the web, according to draft guidelines.

There are dozens of treatment centres offering to wean youths, mostly
boys, from spending hours on the web.

Many of them are military-style boot camps that rely on tough programmes
of physical exercise and counselling.

Two boys were beaten at separate camps earlier this year, one died and the
other was severely injured.

"When intervening to prevent improper use of the internet we should...
strictly prohibit restriction of personal freedom and physical
punishments," the ministry said in a draft guideline quoted by Reuters
news agency.

[excerpt]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8344002.stm

Monday, November 02, 2009

Training resources from Media Helping Media

These training modules have been put together to offer ongoing help to
journalists in transition states, post-conflict countries, and areas where
freedom of expression is under threat.

The only condition for using these modules is that you let us know if you
spot any typos. Many have been written on planes, in departure lounges and
in hotels and they may contain spelling errors.

Also, please credit Media Helping Media (or the author if it is a module
written by a guest) with a mention and a link if you refer to them online.
If you have a training module you would like to make available, please use
the contact us form and let us know.

http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/content/section/6/234/

# Basic journalism training ( 16 items )
This section contains modules covering basic journalism training. There
will be some overlap with other sections, particularly as many media
organisations now have converged news operations, but we have tried to
store these modules in the most appropriate categories for the bulk of the
content they contain. Please, click through to the other setions, too. If
you want to add to this section, please use the contact us form and your
contribution will be considered for inclusion.

# Advanced journalism training ( 4 items )
This section contains modules covering advanced journalism training. There
will be some overlap with other sections, particularly as many media
organisations now have converged news operations, but we have tried to
store these modules in the most appropriate categories for the bulk of the
content they contain. Please, click through to the other setions, too. If
you want to add to this section, please use the contact us form and your
contribution will be considered for inclusion.
# Editorial ethics ( 9 items )

This section contains modules covering the ethical issues that journalists
face day-to-day, such as balance, impartiality, integrity, fairness, taste
and decency, offence, privacy, etc. They are continually updated to
reflect social and cultural changes. It is important that these modules
are continually revisited and kept fresh. If you want to add to this
section, please use the contact us form and your contribution will be
considered for inclusion.
# Media management ( 3 items )

This section contains modules covering media management. These training
courses cover all management aspects from how to run a newsroom to how to
manage a news business. If you would like to contribute a module to the
series, please use the contact us form and your contribution will be
considered for inclusion.

# Online and multimedia ( 7 items )
This section contains modules covering online and multimedia journalism.
There may be some overlap with other sections, particularly as many media
organisations now have converged news operations, but we have tried to
store these modules in the most appropriate categories for the bulk of the
content they contain. If you want to add to this section, please use the
contact us form and your contribution will be considered for inclusion.

# Social networking ( 10 items )
This is a new section of Media Helping Media. We should have loads of
material available here already, but the fact is that we have been slow
off the mark. Now we are aiming to make up time rapidly. If you would like
to contribute a resource (no payment, it's done for the love of it),
please let us know by using the contact us form. You can follow us on
Twitter @helpingmedia.

# Media strategy ( 4 items )
This section contains modules covering media strategy. These training
courses cover how to set a content strategy and run a converged news
operation in order to deliver content to multiple outlets. If you would
like to contribute a module to the series, please use the contact us form
and your contribution will be considered for inclusion.

# Refugee media ( 1 items )
This section deals with how refugee communities can set up and operate
successful news organisations in areas which are often poorly covered by
the mainstream media. The author, T.P. Mishra (left) set up a media
operation in the Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal over an eight year
period. Now living in New York under a refugee resettlement project,
Mishra, the author of 'Becoming a Journalist in Exile' has put together a
number of guides for those who want to follow his lead.

Bhutan media group seeks international support

Bhutan media group seeks international support

http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/content/view/519/1/
PDF Print E-mail
 
Monday, 02 November 2009
MNB - participant of journalism training from jan 27-16feb.2007.JPG	participant of journalism training from jan 27-16 feb.2007 - Photo Mona Rath Pokhrel
Trainee journalists on one of the courses - Photo Mona Rath Pokhrel
A media support group, run by Bhutanese journalists living in exile, is looking for international support in order to continue to develop its media training programmes and to campaign for media freedom in the region.

The Media Network Bhutan (MNB), run entirely by volunteers, is approaching its third anniversary. It claims its training courses have helped hundreds of Bhutanese journalists living in the refugee camps in Nepal.

The aim now is to bring together the overseas Bhutanese refugee communities that have been resettled in the West in order to strengthen their media skills and to mobilise them in a campaign for media freedom within Bhutan.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

* Google opens OneBox music service *

* Google opens OneBox music service *
Search giant Google enters the online music market with a new service for
finding and buying music online.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/technology/8331290.stm

* Canada jails Rwandan war criminal *

* Canada jails Rwandan war criminal *
A Rwandan man convicted of war crimes is jailed for life by a Canadian court,
without the prospect of parole for 25 years.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/americas/8333046.stm

Survey of blocked Uyghur websites shows Xinjiang still cut off from the world

Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières

29 October 2009

CHINA
Survey of blocked Uyghur websites shows Xinjiang still cut off from the world
http://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=34859

Reporters Without Borders has surveyed access to websites dedicated to the
Uyghur community, including sites in the Uyghur language, in Mandarin and
sometimes in English. These sites, operated for Uyghurs, are for the most
part inaccessible both to Internet users based in Xinjiang and those
abroad. More than 85 per cent of the surveyed sites were blocked, censored
or otherwise unreachable.

"The discrimination to which Uyghurs have been subjected for decades as
regards their freedom of expression and their religious and economic
freedom now applies to their Internet access as well," Reporters Without
Borders said. "Four months after the violence in Urumqi, the Chinese
authorities continue to keep the province cut off from the rest of the
world. We must not be duped by the illusion of normality. Most Uyghurs
still cannot go online, send SMS messages or even make phone calls."

The press freedom organisation added: "The official reason given for this
blackout, that 'terrorists used the Internet and SMS messaging,' is
unacceptable. Do the Pakistani or Afghan authorities suspend the Internet
because terrorists sent email messages? No. The Chinese government seems
more interested in preventing Xinjiang's inhabitants from circulating
information about the real situation in the province, especially about the
crackdown after the July riots."

Reporters Without Borders urges the authorities to restore Internet and
phone connections in Xinjiang without delay. "The dozens of websites in
the Uyghur language and websites about Xinjiang that have been closed must
be allowed to reopen and those who edit them must have freedom of
movement," the organisation added.

Carried out in October, the survey examined around 100 Uyghur websites,
portals, forums, blogs and other kinds of online platform. Various factors
were considered, such as the country in which the site is based, the type
of site (such as forum or blog), the type of content (such as news,
politics, culture or sport), the language, and the problems encountered
when the attempt was made to visit the site (such as change of address,
overly long delay in opening or error message).

The results highlight the degree of paralysis of the Uyghur Internet
during the pasts four months. The more than 85 per cent of the sites that
are inaccessible include very popular ones such as Diyarim
(www.diyarim.com), Xabnam (www.xabnam.com) and Ulinix (www.ulinix.com), a
site registered in the name of the University of Xinjiang that served as a
portal.

More than half of the websites – including Uzmakan (www.uzmakan.com) and
Uzonline (www.uzonline.net), whose addresses refer explicitly to the
Uyghur community – are inaccessible because of interminable connection
delays. Others have for months been displaying temporary error messages,
which disguise the fact that they have been closed down for good.

The few accessible sites such as Uighurbiz (www.uighurbiz.net) are based
in other countries, often the United States, where there is a sizable
Uyghur diaspora, or are based in China but have a content that is in no
way political and have no sensitive information, such as Blogbus
(www.qutyar.blogbus.com).

Some sites are the victims of targeted censorship. The news section of the
Gazina website (www.gazina.com) was inaccessible during the survey but its
music and cinema sections were working. The Akburkut (www.akburkut.com),
Tahdir (bbs.tahdir.com), Uyghurum (www.uyghurum.net) and Karamet
(http://karamet.5d6d.com) websites did not let visitors register in order
to post messages.

Many reports have confirmed Xinjiang's isolation since July 2009 and the
severe problems being encountered by Internet café owners, online stores,
and students while they wait for the Internet to resume working. Ordinary
residents are also hard put to send or receive emails or text messages.

The Chinese authorities meanwhile continue to regularly censor websites in
general. An average of one site is shut down every two days. This is what
happened on 24 October, for example, to the blogs on the Free China Forum
(http://zyzg.us.), one of the most influential political debate platforms.

Similarly, Window of Southern Breeze, a website linked to the Guangzhou
Daily News Corporation's online magazine, was blocked on 26 October after
it posted an article from the 21 October print issue about incidents
involving the police. Other sites that had reproduced the article had to
remove it.

---------

CHINE
Etude sur le blocage des sites Internet ouïghours : le Xinjiang toujours
coupé du monde
http://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=34858

Reporters sans frontières a mené une enquête sur la situation de l'accès
aux sites Internet dédiés à la communauté ouïghoure. La plupart de ces
sites, en langue ouïghoure, chinoise et parfois anglaise, fait par ou pour
des Ouïghours, sont, pour la grande majorité, inaccessibles aux
internautes, que ceux-ci soient basés au Xinjiang ou bien à l'étranger.
Sur 91 sites répertoriés, plus de 85% étaient bloqués, censurés ou hors
d'atteinte.

"La discrimination qui frappe depuis des décennies les Ouïghours dans leur
liberté d'expression, leur liberté religieuse et économique, s'étend
maintenant à leur accès à Internet. Presque quatre mois après les
violences à Urumqi, les autorités chinoises maintiennent la province
coupée du monde. L'illusion de la normalité ne doit pas tromper, la
majorité des Ouïghours ne peuvent toujours pas consulter Internet, envoyer
des SMS ou tout simplement téléphoner. Et les motifs officiels de ce black
out – "les terroristes utilisent Internet et les SMS" – sont
inacceptables. Est-ce que les autorités pakistanaises ou afghanes
suspendent Internet car les terroristes envoient des emails ? Non. Le
gouvernement chinois semble plutôt intéressé d'empêcher les habitants du
Xinjiang de faire sortir les informations sur la situation réelle dans la
province, notamment la répression qui a suivi les émeutes de juillet", a
affirmé l'organisation.

Reporters sans frontières demande que les connexions Internet et
téléphoniques soient rétablies dans les meilleurs délais au Xinjiang. "Les
sites en ouïghour ou dédiés au Xinjiang qui ont été fermés par dizaines
doivent être rouverts et leurs responsables libres de leurs mouvements", a
précisé l'organisation.

Réalisée en octobre 2009, l'enquête repose sur l'examen d'une centaine de
sites Web, portails, forums, blogs et autres plateformes ouïghoures.
Plusieurs facteurs ont été pris en compte au cours de cette enquête, comme
le pays dans lequel le site Internet est basé, le type de site (forum,
blog, etc.), le type de contenu offert par le site (informations,
politique, culture, sport, etc.), la langue et les problèmes rencontrés
lors de la visite du site (changement d'adresse, délai d'ouverture du site
trop long, message d'erreur, etc.).

Les résultats sont éloquents sur la situation de quasi-paralysie de
l'Internet ouïghour depuis près de quatre mois. Plus de 85% des sites sont
inaccessibles et on compte parmi eux des sites très populaires tels que
www.diyarim.com, www.xabnam.com ou www.ulinix.com, site enregistré au nom
de l'université du Xinjiang et faisant office de portail Web.

Plus de la moitié des sites visités, comme www.uzmakan.com ou
www.uzonline.net dont l'adresse fait explicitement référence à la
communauté ouïghoure, sont inaccessibles en raison de délais de connexions
dépassés. D'autres sites affichent des messages d'erreur temporaires
depuis plusieurs mois, qui masquent une fermeture définitive.

Les rares sites accessibles, à l'instar de www.uighurbiz.net, sont basés à
l'étranger, souvent aux Etats-Unis où la diaspora ouïghoure est
importante, ou bien en Chine, mais dans ce cas leur contenu n'est jamais
politique, et ne traite pas d'informations sensibles (par exemple:
http://www.qutyar.blogbus.com).

Certains sites sont victimes de censures ciblées. Durant l'enquête, la
rubrique d'informations du site www.gazina.com était inaccessible alors
que les rubriques de musique et de cinéma fonctionnaient. Les sites
www.akburkut.com, bbs.tahdir.com, www.uyghurum.net ou
http://karamet.5d6d.com/ ne permettaient pas de s'enregistrer pour poster
des messages.

Depuis juillet 2009, de nombreux témoignages ont confirmé l'état
d'isolement dont est victime le Xinjiang, et du désarroi des propriétaires
de cybercafés et de magasins en ligne ou des étudiants qui attendent
qu'Internet fonctionne à nouveau. Les habitants rencontrent également des
difficultés pour envoyer et recevoir des mails et des messages par
téléphone.

D'autre part, les autorités chinoises continuent à censurer régulièrement
des sites Internet. Un site, en moyenne, se retrouve fermé tous les deux
jours. Ainsi, le 24 octobre, les blogs établis sur la plateforme du site
Free China Forum (http://zyzg.us.), l'un des plus influents dans le débat
politique, ont subi ce traitement. De même, le site officiel Window of
Southern Breeze, lié au magazine en ligne du Guangzhou Daily News
Corporation, a été bloqué le 26 octobre. Selon l'organisation CHRD, le
site avait mis en ligne un article du magazine papier du 21 octobre
relatant des incidents impliquant la police. L'article a dû être retiré
d'autres sites qui l'avaient également republié.

Vincent Brossel
Asia-Pacific Desk
Reporters Without Borders
33 1 44 83 84 70
asia@rsf.org

Tiny banner advertisements attached to flies.. should work great in the North!

"... A company at a German trade show has attached tiny banner advertisements to flies and set them loose on unsuspecting visitors, in a bizarre yet effective marketing stunt.The banners, measuring just a few centimetres across, seem to be causing the beleaguered flies a bit of piloting trouble. The weight keeps the flies at a lower altitude and forces them to rest more often, which is a stroke of genius on the part of the marketing creatives: the flies end up at about eye level, and whenever a fly is forced to land and recover, the banner is clearly visible. What's more, the zig-zagging of the fly naturally attracts the attention because of its rapid movement..." But what will PETA say?

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Prosecutors Turn Tables on Northwestern University's Student Journalists

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Prosecutors Turn Tables on Student Journalists
From: moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG
Date: Sun, October 25, 2009 22:00
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prosecutors Turn Tables on Student Journalists
By MONICA DAVEY
New York Times
October 25, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25innocence.html?th&emc=th

[excerpt]


EVANSTON, Ill. - For more than a decade, classes of students at
Northwestern University's journalism school have been scrutinizing the
work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as
part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release of
11 inmates, the project's director says, and an Illinois governor once
cited those wrongful convictions as he announced he was commuting the
sentences of everyone on death row.

But as the Medill Innocence Project is raising concerns about another
case, that of a man convicted in a murder 31 years ago, a hearing has been
scheduled next month in Cook County Circuit Court on an unusual request:
Local prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades, grading criteria, class
syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students
themselves.

The prosecutors, it seems, wish to scrutinize the methods of the students
this time. The university is fighting the subpoenas.

Lawyers in the Cook County state's attorney's office say that in their
quest for justice in the old case, they need every pertinent piece of
information about the students' three-year investigation into Anthony
McKinney, who was convicted of fatally shooting a security guard in 1978.
Mr. McKinney's conviction is being reviewed by a judge.

Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better, a spokeswoman
said, is whether students believed they would receive better grades if
witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney.

Northwestern University and David Protess, the professor who leads the
students and directs the Medill Innocence Project, say the demands are
ridiculously overreaching, irrelevant to Mr. McKinney's case, in violation
of the state's protections for journalists and a breach of federal privacy
statutes - not to mention insulting.

John Lavine, the dean of the Medill School of Journalism, said the
suggestion that students might have thought their grades were linked to
what witnesses said was "astonishing." He said he believed that federal
law
barred him from providing the students grades, but that he had no
intention of doing so in any case..

[...]

Friday, October 23, 2009

ManyCam Virtual Webcam 2.4.44 [MAC & WIN]

ManyCam Virtual Webcam 2.4.44
http://www.manycam.com/

If you're the kind of person you has a need for being in several different
places at once, the ManyCam application is worth a look. Essentially, the
application allows interested parties the ability to use their webcam with
multiple programs simultaneously. The application also allows users to
customize their backgrounds with falling snow, flickering flames, or a
pelagic view that gives the appearance of being 20,000 leagues under the
sea. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 95 and newer
and Mac OS X 10.5 and newer. [KMG]

Thanks to:
>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2009.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

Five reasons corporations are failing at social media

Five reasons corporations are failing at social media

[excerpts]

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/132126

"It's not rocket surgery."

That malapropism became a bit of a mantra at last week's Inbound Marketing
Summit.

Social media isn't complicated. When you boil it down it's about listening
to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving
them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you. The IMS
speakers shared several case studies (yes, too many of them mentioned
Comcast and Zappos) on how organizations have embraced social media to
connect with and built trust and affection among customers. None of the
examples required hyper-specialized knowledge or technology for a company
to connect with people.

So why is it so difficult for so many companies to successfully integrate
social media? I dug through my (30 pages of) notes to try and find some
themes in what the speakers shared and came up with a this list of why
organizations might be getting hung up.

1. They can't talk about anything broader than their own products.

[...]

2. They listen to customers but don't take any action

[...]

3. They aren't calibrated internally with the technology

[...]

4. They're not framing risk accurately

[...]

5. Their internal culture isn't aligned for social media success

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Yes Men Fix the US Chamber of Commerce

Canadian Folk-Blues-Jazz Radio Shows

This site is a listing of folk, blues, and jazz related shows aired on
campus and community radio stations in Canada (and a few CBC shows, too).
It is maintained by Melissa Kaestner (as passed on from Ian Gifford). If
you find something that needs correcting (shows, spelling, stations,
whatever!) or if you have a new listing then please email me at
melissa.kaestner[at]gmail.com.

A note from some campus and community radio music directors (other music
directors and programmers may have different opinions and approaches):
Artists/bands are encouraged to send releases to the station (Music
Director) to ensure charting. If music only gets to the show hosts, then
the release may not be eligible for charting, nor will the station have
access to your recording once the show hosts move on. Artists are
encouraged to contact the stations to find out their policy. Tips on how
to get airplay: blogs at http://www.myspace.com/communityradio and
http://www.myspace.com/digyourroots

Charting: Campus and community stations report to a variety of charts and
publications. The main publication for the sector is !earshot Magazine.
http://www.earshot-online.com/
!earshot maintains a weekly Top 50 and a monthly Top 200 spanning all
airplay and genres, as well as a Top 10 for specific genres, including:
Folk/Roots/Blues, Jazz, Electronic, Hip Hop, International, and Loud.
!earshot also publishes music reviews and other music-related resources,
including top picks from music directors around the country. It is
published online as well as monthly in Exclaim! Magazine.
http://www.exclaim.ca/

http://sites.google.com/site/rootsradiolist/

Sunday, October 18, 2009

HERB & DOROTHY

"Most of us go through the world, never seeing anything. Then you meet somebody like Herb and Dorothy, who have eyes that see." —Richard Tuttle, artist

He was a postal worker. She was a librarian. Together they amassed one of the most important contemporary art collections in the world.

HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary tale of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a seemingly ordinary couple who filled their humble one-bedroom New York apartment with more than 4,000 works of art over a 45-year period. Filmmaker Megumi Sasaki turns her lens on the Vogels during a critical period of transition for the couple and their cherished collection.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel, wearing heavy winter coats and scarves, smile at the camera with ChristoÕs flowing orange installation ÒThe GatesÓ above and behind them on a path in Central Park, New York.
Herb and Dorothy at The Gates, Central Park, 2005

From the earliest days of their marriage, the Vogels delighted in art. While working the midnight shift at the post office, Herb studied by day at the Institute of Fine Arts. Dorothy soon followed suit and began taking classes in painting and drawing. But ultimately, Dorothy confesses, they were "wannabe artists" and quickly gave up their own ambitions when they realized the joys of collecting.

Despite their modest income, the two began acquiring work that was undiscovered or unappreciated in the early 1960s, primarily Minimalist and Conceptual art by such visionaries as Robert and Sylvia Mangold, Donald Judd, Richard Tuttle, Sol LeWitt, Christo, Lynda Benglis and many other artists who are featured in the film.

More at

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/herb-and-dorothy/film.html

Ancient aboriginals in Australia may have been faster than a speeding Bolt!

http://www.australiannews.net/story/554479

[excerpt]

Edinburgh, October 15 : A leading anthropologist has suggested that
ancient aboriginals in Australia would have outrun Usain Bolt, the fastest
man alive, while a Neanderthal woman would have crushed Arnold
Schwarzenegger in arm-wrestling.

According to a report in The Scotsman, Peter McAllister, the author of
"Manthropology: the Science of Inadequate Modern Man", claims men today
are the weakest in history and would have been trumped in feats of
strength or speed by our ancient ancestors.

McAllister finds evidence he believes proves modern man is inferior to his
predecessors in, among other fields, the basic Olympic athletics
disciplines of running and jumping.

His conclusions about the speed of Australian aboriginals 20,000 years ago
are based on a set of footprints, preserved in a fossilised claypan lake
bed, of six men chasing prey.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Do you need media insurance?

Do you need media insurance?

October 13, 2009 · Filed Under News

The Online News Association is surveying digital journalists to gauge the
need for low-cost Media Liability Insurance coverage, which includes
libel, defamation, copyright and other publishing torts.

If ONA determines enough need and interest, we will work to provide a
program tailored for digital journalists under the ONA name.

Please take a few moments to complete the following survey. If you aren't
in need of Media Liability Insurance, please forward this to someone who
might be.

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/do-you-need-media-insurance/

Report: Top Keyword Price Nears $100 Per Click

Report: Top Keyword Price Nears $100 Per Click
by Laurie Sullivan, Wednesday, October 14, 2009, 3:45 PM

[excerpt]

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115431

The highest-priced keyword in the United States last month sold on Google
for $99.44 per click, according to the AdGooroo Search Engine Advertising
Update: Q309.

The report released Wednesday pegs Mesothelioma as the highest-selling
keyword in September. The same word sold on Yahoo in the No. 1 spot for
$60.68 per click. The phrase "auto insurance comparison" took top honors
on Bing, bringing in $55.20 per click.

It's the first time that AdGooroo's quarterly report has analyzed the
price for keywords, according to Rich Stokes, founder and CEO of AdGooroo.
He couldn't tell Online Media Daily how many times the top keywords were
clicked on during the month.

As for the word "mesothelioma," it seems lawyers have ramped up
paid-search ads based on lawsuits related to the asbestos-causing lung
cancer. The paid search ads direct people to lawyers affected by the death
sentence. "If I was a law firm specializing in mesothelioma lawsuits I
would put the paid-search ads on Bing," he says. "The word hasn't caught
up demand on Bing as it has on the other two search engines."

Stokes believes average cost per click (CPCs) will remain flat through
2010. Advertisers can expect to see keywords shift in and out of the
top-priced list. It suggests the industry has begun to mature.

The report also lists the top 25 U.S. advertisers by search engine. Among
the top in alphabetical order are Amazon.com, Ask.com, Att.com, eBay.com,
Google.com, Priceline.com and more. Companies come and go from this list
each quarter, Stokes says. Travel companies seem to dominate in the first
quarter, replaced in the fourth quarter by retail.

Actual Newspaper Story or the Onion Headline?

Ever read a small-town newspaper and just scratch your head in disbelief
at the funny headlines? We do all the time, and we can't help but notice
how similar many are to headlines in The Onion. Think you can spot real
news from fake?

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/36766

AP’s Tom Curley on the “oversupply” of news and whathe’s doing about it

By Zachary M. Seward / Oct. 13 / 8:40 a.m.

Tom Curley, president and chief executive of The Associated Press, was in
China last week for a government-sponsored media summit, where he compared
digital content to NCAA basketball and explained the AP's plans to build
revenue online. But Curley was far more revealing when he spoke without a
prepared text on October 6 at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong
Kong. I wrote about the big news from that talk on Friday but can now
share the audio and transcript.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/aps-tom-curley-on-the-oversupply-of-news-and-what-hes-doing-about-it/

Linux laptop for every pupil in Uruguay

* Laptop for every pupil in Uruguay *
Uruguay has given 362,000 primary children laptops which run on a Linux
desktop.
Full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/technology/8309583.stm

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Portal Ceibal
http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/
One Laptop Per Child
http://laptop.org/en/

MEDIA: South-South Radio from Caracas to Africa

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frederick Noronha <fredericknoronha@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/10/8
Subject: [cr-india] MEDIA: South-South Radio from Caracas to Africa
To: cr-india@sarai.net


http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48749

MEDIA:
South-South Radio from Caracas to Africa
By Mildred Pineda

CARACAS, Oct 6 (IPS) - Poverty, attacks on human rights and corporate fraud will be among the main news coverage focuses of a new regional public radio network, Radio del Sur, which will link stations from South America and Africa.

Radio del Sur (Radio of the South) emerged as "an instrument of integration in a world of shifting power alignments and geopolitical changes," said Helena Salcedo, director of the Radio Nacional de Venezuela (the state-owned national radio station), who heads the new Caracas-based station.

Salcedo said the Venezuelan government, which launched the new network of public stations, is providing "a small amount" of funding, but did not provide figures.

The new station is motivated by the same objectives underlying Telesur, the Caracas-based regional TV network that for four years has been broadcasting news coverage, documentaries and series aimed at "giving a voice" to those who have none in the mainstream media.

Telesur is a 24-hour Latin America-wide network jointly owned by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. The bulk of the station's financing comes from the Venezuelan government, with other governments providing mainly logistical and in-country support.

For now, Radio del Sur is broadcasting mainly music and some news, using the internet for international coverage, over a network of stations that reach 40 percent of the country.

The first day it went on the air, on Sept. 27, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said "People in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa are going to learn about their history and their revolutionary political struggles."

That was a concrete objective, he said, laid out by the second Africa-South America summit held Sept. 26-27 on Venezuela's Margarita Island, where the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador pledged support for the initiative.

Radio del Sur will closely follow news on the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the new regional lender Banco del Sur, Petrocaribe, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Universidad del Sur (University of the South), the Gasoducto del Sur (pipeline of the South) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) - blocs and projects aimed at political, financial, economic, energy and cultural integration, many of which were Chávez's initiatives.

The radio network will also provide coverage of social movements and cooperation agreements between the regions.

The programming will be planned with partner stations from Mexico to Argentina. Contacts have also been made with community and indigenous stations in Colombia. Venezuela will provide the system with news programmes and interviews, and editing and coordination will take place in Caracas.

On the Radio del Sur web site, www.laradiodelsur.com, 88 stations from Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, Canada and Spain are listed as partners: 18 from Argentina, 10 from Colombia, five from Bolivia, four from Uruguay and Honduras, three from Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and the United States, two from Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti and Peru, and one from Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

The eventual goal is to translate the programming into French, English, Dutch and Arabic, so that it can expand throughout the African continent.

Programming content will also be shared with several radio stations in Africa: stations in Gambia, Benin and Algeria – which have Spanish language broadcasts – and in Equatorial Guinea, where Spanish is one of the official languages.

Writer and media expert Luis Britto García, a member of the Telesur advisory council, told IPS that "Radio del Sur's broadcasts must provide an accurate view of reality, because the conventional media tend to create an illusory world; they only air reruns while transmitting U.S. values as if they were our own."

In U.S. programming, "we are depicted as picturesque beings, but actually, we have our own cultures," he said.

The question of the impartiality of Radio del Sur could be a point of controversy, as it will be largely financed by the Venezuelan government.

But Britto said that will not be a problem, because the government "is governed by the constitution, which stipulates that news must be veracious."

Furthermore, the station "is not going to sit on news items until they are no longer important, nor is it going to lie or censor, as the transnational news networks do – something that can be seen simply by turning to certain channels," he said.

Salcedo said "nations that have been subjected to the transnational news networks will now have a station that will be open to participation."

Magda Gibelli, a 21-year-old journalism student at the Santa María University in Caracas, said "it is always good when new media outlets are opened, but that depends on the focus that it will have, because we often see that official channels only show one viewpoint on what is happening in Latin America – in this case, from the angle of the left."

Another journalism student, Yosvelin Saavedra, 23, said "on Radio del Sur, listeners can find other eyes and microphones to see reality as it is; I just hope they focus on social issues instead of waging media wars."

The new station itself complains about a smear campaign and "counteroffensive" against the Chávez administration's so-called "Bolivarian revolution" by local and international stations.

The directors of Radio del Sur recall, for example, that in 2005, U.S. Congressman Connie Mack, a Republican from Florida, sponsored a bill that was to increase broadcasting to Venezuela "as a way to provide an accurate and comprehensive alternative source of news to the people of Venezuela" and counter Telesur's "anti-Americanism." The broadcasting would be financed by the U.S. government.

In late July, the Venezuelan government broadcasting watchdog Conatel ordered the closure of 32 radio stations and two TV stations because they failed to comply with regulations – a decision that drew wide criticism, on both the local and international levels.

Public Works Minister Diosdado Cabello, who oversees Conatel, said some of the stations were shut down because they did not renew their broadcasting licenses, and others because the stations had been illegally transferred to new owners.

Radio del Sur will broadcast on 98.5 FM, which it was assigned by Conatel prior to the July closures.

Salcedo said her team "has fulfilled all of the legal procedures," unlike the outlets that were taken off the air on Aug. 1. (END/2009)


--
Frederick Noronha :: +91-832-2409490
Writing, editing, alt.publishing, photography, journalism
Blog: http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
Photos: http://photosfromgoa.notlong.com
Goa,1556: http://goa1556.goa-india.org

_______________________________________________
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Friday, October 16, 2009

Should access to broadband be a right?

Finland has made broadband a 'legal right', leading experts to question
whether the UK government is similarly committed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8311081.stm

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Google launches e-book platform

Google launches e-book platform

[excerpt]

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2009/10/15/google-ebook-frankfurt.html


Google Inc. is launching an online service that will let readers buy
electronic versions of books and read them on such gadgets as cellphones,
laptops and possibly e-book devices.

Google Editions marks the company's first effort to earn revenue from its
ambitious Google Books scanning project, which attempts to make millions
of printed books available online. Although the scanning program has faced
complaints from authors and publishers over copyright, Google Editions
will cover only books submitted and approved by the copyright holders when
it launches next year.

The books bought through Google Editions will be accessible on any device
that has a web browser, including smart phones, netbooks and personal
computers and laptops, putting Google in competition with Amazon.com Inc.
and its Kindle e-book reader.

Tom Turvey, head of Google Book Search's publisher partnership program,
said Thursday the e-book market is evolving to allow access of books from
anywhere and from any device.

Consumers can buy directly from Google or from any number of online
booksellers and other retail partners using the Google Editions platform.
Google will actually host the e-books and make them searchable.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Sell The Vatican, Feed The World (HD, Official)

Sarah Silverman's ambitious plan for feeding the world.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Piano stairs - Rolighetsteorin.se - The fun theory


Video

2009-11-08 14:15

”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here.
http://www.rolighetsteorin.se/en/

Friday, October 09, 2009

Canuk Feds accused of softening stance on anti-spam law

Feds accused of softening stance on anti-spam law

OTTAWA — The Conservative government has buckled under pressure from businesses to water down its anti-spam legislation so some marketers can continue to send unsolicited e-mails.

And the government is now looking for an opposition party to help pass a bill with new loopholes, after Industry Canada officials released a list of more than 40 proposed amendments on behalf of the government. Some are technical and will not affect the scope of the bill meant to curtail junk mail, but others will narrow the reach of the proposed law.

They include new exceptions for: product updates, solicitation to participate in surveys or market research, and information on self-governing professions.

The government proposal also expands implied consent to receive unsolicited e-mails in instances where a person has provided her e-mail address to the sender, and removes the need for explicit consent for software programs for updates or upgrades, if consent was obtained in the past.

The John Howard Society of the NWT Logo

George Lessard
is pleased to announce, that at the John Howard Society of the Northwest Territories AGM Oct 8, 2009 he was elected to serve as Vice-president of the Society. The society's office is located in the basement of the Tundra Building (867) 920-4276...

JOHN HOWARD SOCIETY PARTNERS FOR HOMELESS DAY SHELTER

YELLOWKNIFE (October 1, 2009) – The Honourable Sandy Lee, Minister of Health and Social Services, Mayor Gordon Van Tighem, City of Yellowknife, and Richard Morland, Interim President and Chief Operating Officer of BHP Billiton’s EKATI Diamond Mine are pleased to announce their partnership with the John Howard Society. The John Howard Society won the request for proposal and will operate the day shelter in Yellowknife.

The day shelter will be operated as a pilot project for three years to allow the facility’s usage and future capability to be evaluated. The day shelter will be open and ready for use by the fall.

For more information contact:
Damien Healy
Communications
Department of Health and Social Services
Government of the Northwest Territories
Tel: (867) 920-8927 Fax: (867) 873-0204

Max Hall
City of Yellowknife
Tel: (867) 920-5624 Fax: (867) 920-5649

Deana Twissell
Superintendent of Corporate and Community Affairs
BHP Billiton Diamonds Inc.
Tel: (867) 669-6107 Fax: (867) 669-9293

Lydia Bardak, Executive Director
The John Howard Society of the NWT
(867) 920-4276

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Who Makes the News

Who Makes the News

In November 2009, the world news media will once again come under scrutiny during the 4th Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). Volunteers from women's rights organizations, media associations, academia, etc across the world will collaborate in a one-day global research on gender in their local news media. GMMP research results are applied as a tool for change towards gender equality in and through media.

Monday, October 05, 2009

Livebrush

What is Livebrush?

Livebrush is a drawing application. It employs an easy-to-use brush tool
that reacts to your gesture. By combining simple motion controls with
brush styles, Livebrush offers a fun and unique way to create graphics.

Livebrush runs on all major operating systems. But it should be noted that
as an image creation tool, the type of image you're trying to create plays
a large part in how the software performs.

An internet connection is required to access help files and documention

http://www.livebrush.com/index.html

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Webnographers: Resources for Virtual Ethnography + Cyberanthropology

Cyberanthropology is but a fetal field, far from defined. This website was developed in the interest of providing a central hub for those interested in ethnography of the internet. Created by and for webnographers, its success in contingent on your participation.

Ethnography is not constrained solely to anthropologists, and indeed the barriers that divide the various social sciences are at once arbitrary and collapsible. Any individual interested in the complex social, cultural, and psychological facets of humans relating with and through the internet is encouraged to join in this nascent community.

http://webnographers.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

ISES Solar World Congress (SWC) 2009


http://www.solarworldcongress2009.com/

 Renewable Energy Resources can Unlock Africa's Potential

The potential solutions that renewable energy resources can provide in solving the world's energy problems will be presented by scientists and researchers at the ISES Solar World Congress (SWC) 2009 at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg from 11 – 14 October 2009. 
 

 The ISES SWC 2009 will not only focus on global issues but will clearly reflect significantly on Africa, while also paying increased attention to environmental and social responsibility issues, global warning and climate change. The Congress will address, in particular, the role that the renewable energy resources can play in the sustainable development of poor and rural communities in Africa.  
 

 First and foremost will be the use of various new technologies that can convert the abundance of solar energy on the continent into electricity to boost much-needed economic development, which relies heavily on energy supplies. Presentations will include the latest research and technological advances in these conversion processes. 

 "Our continent's potential to be one of the biggest users of renewable energy should not be underestimated," said Jon Adams, Chairperson of the conference steering committee and member of SESSA. Therefore, the timing of this event on the African continent is seen as very appropriate. "In most places in Africa photovoltaic systems are the only source of providing light to those infamous two billion people that live on less that $1 a day and without access to electricity," Adams continued.  
 

 Top international scientists and researchers will share their latest findings and innovations with peers and the energy industry. Presentations will cover a diverse range of themes such as Resource Assessment, Solar Heating and Cooling, Solar Electricity, Solar Buildings, and Solar Energy & Society.  

The Congress programme is still being finalized, but it already holds promises of a good balance between science and research with a generous touch of current affairs and controversy. High profile national and international speakers will address the most recent and current topics in the sustainable energy field.  

Another speaker who is expected to attract wide attention is Prof. Vivian Alberts of South Africa, who will discuss his reasons for moving his enterprise to Germany. A panel discussion on concentrating solar power and Eskom's technology choices is bound to attract considerable interest from governments and industry in the southern African region.  

The recent announcement in South Africa of the Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (Refit) has created quite a buzz in the industry and it is expected that the pros and cons of Refit and the level of the tariffs will be hotly debated during the congress. Dr. Hermann Scheer who first introduced the Feed-in Tariff into the German Parliament will also be one of the keynote speakers.

"The above examples represent just a small sample of the level of debate that can be expected at the Congress. We will make more information available about the programme as invited speakers confirm their participation," so Adams.

ISES SWC 2009 key objective are to:

  • ensure a sustainable energy future
  • promote and increase the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency
  • promote the use of renewable energy resources to positively impact on the quality of life for future generations
  • development of future opportunities for the use of renewable energy in Africa
  • jointly seek solutions which are consistent with the principles of sustainability - affordability, environmentally sound and socially acceptable .
 

Renewable Energy Expo

http://www.solarworldcongress2009.com/index.php/expo.html

Parallel to this Congress, SESSA will also promote the interest of the trade and the public by introducing a Renewable Energy Expo, a trade exhibition. The theme of the Expo is Efficient; Alternative; Sustainable, and it will focus on solar, renewable, sustainable, alternative and efficient energy resources and products, services and developments. The Expo will showcase the industrial and domestic use of new technologies and inventions that will be of interest to the business sector and the public at large. SESSA envisages this Renewable Energy Expo to become an annual event. 

Pulitzer Center Internship Fall 2009

Pulitzer Center Internship Fall 2009
  Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
  http://www.idealist.org/en/internship/142968-111
Location: Washington, District of Columbia, 20036, United States

[excerpt]

"... Last day to apply: October 14, 2009
The internship pays $1,000 per month and runs through May

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting seeks an intern for spring 2010, preferably starting the week of January 3, 2010. We are especially interested in web-savvy applicants eager to get the word out about our international reporting projects to as many people as possible - through social networking platforms, online media, campus networks, special events, and other avenues.

With the aim of increasing traffic to our reporting projects and expanding the debate around these international issues, the intern's main duties will include:
• maintenance of our website
• maintenance of our online profiles and channels (including YouTube Channel)
• outreach to the online world, including blogs, social networking sites and new media tools
• compilation of newsletters
• efforts to increase online traffic and expand newsletter subscription base
• assistance with event coordination

Not required but desirable: familiarity with HTML, familiarity with the blogosphere, and experience with increasing web traffic through campaigns such as Google Adwords and social networking sites. Applicants should also have an interest in, and some familiarity with, current international affairs.

The Pulitzer Center is a non-profit leader in sponsoring the independent journalism that media organizations are increasingly less willing to undertake on their own. Pulitzer Center-funded stories shed light on underreported issues and regions around the globe. Our Global Gateway education initiative then brings those stories and the journalists into high schools and universities.

For information on our reporting projects and outreach efforts please see our website, at http://www.pulitzercenter.org The Pulitzer Center is located in the heart of Washington, D.C., near Dupont Circle.

The internship pays $1,000 per month and runs through May. Possibility of internship extension through summer 2010 based on further discussions with applicants and upon mutual agreement. ..."

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

CHINA: Censorship and attacks on journalists in run-up to 1 October anniversary

Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières
www.rsf-chinese.org

29 September 2009

CHINA
Censorship and attacks on journalists in run-up to 1 October anniversary
http://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=34609

"Government security paranoia in the run-up to the celebration of the 60th
anniversary of the proclamation of the People's Republic of China on 1
October has led to a reinforcement of online censorship and abusive
behaviour towards foreign journalists," Reporters Without Borders said
today. "A case of police brutality towards three foreign journalists was
particularly unacceptable."

The press freedom organisation added: "What the authorities are trying to
portray as a big celebration is turning into a major head-ache for
Internet users and a reporters."

Internet control agencies have redoubled efforts to prevent Internet users
based in China, including foreign residents, from using censorship
circumvention software such as Freegate and virtual private networks
(VPN). Experts have told Reporters Without Borders that tens of thousands
of IP addresses suspected by the authorities of using Freegate and VPNs,
especially those that are free, have been blocked in the past few days.

"The Electronic Great Wall has never been as consolidated as it is now, on
the eve of the 1 October anniversary, proving that the Chinese government
is not so sure of its record," Reporters Without Borders said. The new
restrictions are making it even more difficult to access social-networking
websites such Facebook and Twitter, or YouTube's video-sharing sites,
which have been blocked since July.

China's leaders have made combating separatism one of the watchwords of
the 60th anniversary, and new regulations have just been issued for
combating online separatism in the far-western province of Xinjiang.

A Reporters Without Borders study of Uyghur-language and Xinjiang-based
websites has established that the clampdown imposed during last July's
rioting in the province has not been loosened. Most of the sites that
existed before the unrest are either still inaccessible or their content
has not been updated. Of the 65 sites included in the study, 54 are still
blocked for Internet users in China or abroad.

Even Tianshannet.com, a Xinjiang-based website that was held up by the
authorities as an example of a site that respected the regulations, is no
longer accessible. Xinjiang residents have been cut off from the Internet
for almost three months and Uyghurs are being deprived of all news and
information that is independent of the official media.

Three China-based Mongol websites – Mongol Ger Association
(http://www.mongolger.net/), Mongol People Chat Room (MGLhun), which is
hosted on the Sina.com site (http://www.sina.com.cn/), and Mongolian
People (http://www.mongolhun.com/) – have been rendered inaccessible in
the past few weeks.

The Mongol Ger Association site had become very active in promoting the
Mongol language and had referred to sensitive subjects such as arbitrary
arrests and the right to land access for Mongols. The site's owner,
identified as Sodmongol, was arrested by the Chinese authorities on 13
June. Mongol People Chat Room, which covered politics, culture and the
environment and organised events centred on the rights of Mongols in
China, was closed without prior warning.

The Mongolian People site offered a range of services to Mongols in China,
putting people in touch with each other and organising charity events. The
authorities accused all three sites of conspiring with hostile and
separatist foreign forces – the same grounds that have been cited for
censoring dozens of Tibetan websites and forums
(http://www.rsf.org/Authorities-tighten-grip-on.html).

Chinese hackers have meanwhile posted crude messages and xenophobic
slogans on Taiwanese and Australian film festival websites in protest
against the screening of "The 10 Conditions of Love," a documentary about
Uyghur exiled activist Rebiya Kadeer, who is blamed by the Chinese
authorities for stirring up the violence in Xinjiang. The hackers, who did
not hide their affiliation to the Communist Party of China, called on the
festival organisers to apologise to the Chinese people for including the
film in their programmes.

China-based foreign journalists have also been the target of hacker
attacks. Emails containing viruses have been sent to French, American,
Singaporean and Italian correspondents. The Chinese assistants of foreign
reporters have received booby-trapped emails that try to establish a
parallel control over the recipient's computer. At the same time, Chinese
websites based abroad such as Boxun have received very aggressive
distributed denial-of-service attacks DDOS (in which targeted servers are
swamped by simultaneous communication requests).

Police have used violence against foreign journalists trying to cover the
preparations for the 1 October parade. Three journalists employed by the
Japanese news agency Kyodo, for example, were attacked in their hotel room
by plain-clothes men after a parade rehearsal on 18 September. They were
hit about the head and their computers were smashed.

This occurred after the authorities warned more than a dozen of foreign
news media not to film or photograph the preparations. The Foreign
Correspondents' Club of China has asked the foreign ministry to explain
the ban, which is not based on any rule or law.

----------

CHINE
Censures et bavures à la veille du 1er Octobre
http://www.rsf.org/ecrire/?exec=articles&id_article=34610

"La paranoïa sécuritaire des autorités à la veille des célébrations du 60e
anniversaire de la proclamation de la République populaire de Chine, a
conduit à un renforcement de la censure sur Internet et à plusieurs
bavures à l'encontre de journalistes étrangers. Le comportement de
policiers à l'encontre de trois journalistes japonais est particulièrement
inacceptable. Ce que le pouvoir souhaite faire passer pour une fête se
transforme en un casse-tête pour les internautes et les reporters", a
affirmé Reporters sans frontières.

Les administrations en charge du contrôle d'Internet ont redoublé
d'efforts pour empêcher les internautes basés en Chine, notamment les
expatriés, d'utiliser des softwares de contournement de la censure, comme
Freegate, et des logiciels VPN. Selon des experts interrogés par
l'organisation, des dizaines de milliers d'adresses IP, soupçonnées par
les autorités d'utiliser Freegate, et des réseaux VPN, notamment ceux qui
sont gratuits, ont été bloquées au cours des derniers jours.

"La Grande muraille électronique n'aura jamais été aussi consolidée
qu'avant les célébrations du 1er octobre, preuve en est que le
gouvernement chinois n'est pas aussi sûr de son bilan", a estimé Reporters
sans frontières. Ces nouvelles restrictions rendent encore plus difficile
l'accès des internautes aux réseaux sociaux Facebook et Twitter et aux
sites YouTube, bloqués depuis juillet dernier.

Alors que les dirigeants chinois font de la lutte contre le séparatisme
l'un des mots d'ordre de ce soixantième anniversaire, une nouvelle
régulation vient d'être promulguée pour lutter contre le séparatisme en
ligne dans la province du Xinjiang. Selon une étude de Reporters sans
frontières sur les sites en ouïghour ou basés au Xinjiang, l'étau ne s'est
toujours pas desserré depuis les émeutes de début juillet 2009. La plupart
des sites existant avant les événements ne sont toujours pas accessibles
ou leur contenu n'est plus actualisé. Sur plus de 65 sites consultés pour
cette étude, 54 sont toujours bloqués pour les internautes chinois ou
depuis l'étranger. Même le site tianshannet.com (basé au Xinjiang),
pourtant salué par les autorités comme un exemple de respect des
régulations, n'est plus accessible. Depuis pratiquement trois mois, les
habitants du Xinjiang sont coupés d'Internet et les Ouïghours sont privés
de toute information indépendante des médias officiels.

Par ailleurs, trois sites mongols basés en Chine ont été bloqués, à
l'approche du 1er octobre. Mongol Ger Association
(http://www.mongolger.net/), Mongol People Chat Room (MGLhun, hebergé sur
la site http://www.sina.com.cn/) et Mongolian People
(http://www.mongolhun.com/) ont été rendus inaccessibles au cours des
derniers jours. Le site Mongol Ger Association était devenu très actif
dans la promotion de la langue mongole, évoquant des sujets sensibles tels
que les détentions arbitraires et le droit d'accéder à la terre pour les
Mongols. Le propriétaire du site, Sodmongol, a été détenu par les
autorités chinoises le 13 juin 2009. Mongol People Chat Room a été fermé
sans avertissement préalable. Il traitait aussi bien de politique, de
culture, d'environnement et organisait des événements sur les droits des
Mongols en Chine. Enfin, le site Mongolian People offrait des services aux
Mongols de Chine, mettant en relation les gens et organisant des actions
de charité. Selon les autorités, ces sites conspirent avec des forces
étrangères hostiles et séparatistes. Ces même motifs ont été évoqués pour
censurer des dizaines de sites et forums tibétains
(http://www.rsf.org/fr-pays57-Chine.html).

Par ailleurs, des hackers chinois ont posté des messages vulgaires et des
slogans xénophobes sur les sites de festivals de films taïwanais et
australien pour protester contre la diffusion du documentaire "Les dix
conditions de l'amour" sur l'activiste ouïghoure en exil, Rebiya Kadeer,
accusée par Pékin d'avoir incité à la violence dans le Xinjiang. Les
hackers, qui ne cachent plus leur affiliation au Parti communiste chinois,
demandent que les organisateurs s'excusent auprès des Chinois pour avoir
inclus ce documentaire dans le programme.

Des journalistes étrangers basés en Chine ont également été les cibles
d'attaques informatiques. Des messages électroniques contenant des virus
ont été adressés à des correspondants français, américains, singapouriens
et italiens. Des assistants chinois de reporters étrangers ont également
été visés par ces emails piégés qui visent à prendre un contrôle parallèle
sur l'ordinateur du destinataire. Au même moment, des sites Internet
chinois basés à l'étranger, notamment Boxun, sont victimes d'attaques
D-DOS très violentes (attaque durant laquelle le serveur cible est attaqué
par plusieurs ordinateurs simultanément).

A Pékin, les journalistes étrangers qui ont tenté de couvrir les
préparatifs du défilé du 1er octobre ont été violemment pris à partie par
des policiers. Ainsi, le 18 septembre, trois journalistes de l'agence de
presse japonaise Kyodo ont été agressés dans leur chambre d'hôtel par des
hommes en civil après une répétition de la parade officielle. Des
reporters ont été frappés à la tête et des ordinateurs ont été détruits.
Les autorités ont mis en garde plus d'une quinzaine de médias étrangers de
ne pas filmer ou prendre des clichés des préparatifs. Le Foreign
Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) a demandé au ministère des Affaires
étrangères de s'expliquer car cette interdiction ne repose sur aucune
règle ou loi.

Vincent Brossel
Asia-Pacific Desk
Reporters Without Borders
33 1 44 83 84 70
asia@rsf.org

Reporters Without Borders

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Social Network Site Privacy:A Comparative Analysis of Six Sites from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Social Network Site Privacy: A Comparative Analysis of Six Sites

http://priv.gc.ca/information/pub/sub_comp_200901_e.cfm

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
February 2009
Researched by: Jennifer Barrigar

This report was prepared for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner by
Jennifer Barrigar, a consultant and researcher with experience in both
privacy law and developments in internet technology. It was originally
commissioned in late 2008, and a final report was delivered to the Office
in February 2009.

Social networks frequently make amendments or additions to their privacy
policies and protections. As a result, some of the observations made in
this report may appear outdated or even incorrect. This is certainly the
case with Facebook, one social network that has undertaken successive
rounds of privacy amendments in 2009.

This is not the case with many of the other social networking sites
identified by Ms. Barrigar. They are among the most popular sites with
Canadians, but are largely developed and headquartered outside Canada. As
a result, they offer significantly different levels of privacy protection
for their users. This report identifies areas where these sites need to
improve their policies and take steps to effectively protect the personal
information of their users.

Colin McKay
Director of Research, Education and Outreach

cfp: Chinese Journal of Communication Special Edition

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Radhika Gajjala <cyborgwati@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/9/27
Subject: [Air-L] Chinese Journal of Communication Special Edition Call for
Papers
To: aoir list <air-l@aoir.org>


*****Special Issue CJoC 3(4) CFP******


Chinese Journal of Communication

Special Edition

Call for Papers

"Emerging Media and Challenges in Chinese Communities"

Editor
Professor Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University, USA
louisah@bgsu.edu<mailto:louisah@bgsu.edu>

Submission by January 15, 2010

Launched in 2008 and published by Routledge, Chinese Journal of
Communication (CJoC) is an English language scholarly publication aimed at
elevating Chinese communication studies along theoretical, empirical, and
methodological dimensions. This special issue of the Chinese Journal of
Communication (CJoC) is to address the impact and nature of emerging media
in Chinese communities or comparison with other countries or ethnic
communities. Emerging media is defined as message delivery vehicles
achieving higher utilization among the general population, but has neither
universally accepted technical standards for content transmission and
display, nor established operation models such as revenue sources and
content strategies. Examples of emerging media are digital television,
webcasting, podcasting, cellular phones, IPTV, blogs, social media and
networking sites, etc.

China is at the forefront of emerging media. The number of Internet users
in China is the largest in the world and Chinese consumers are among the
most avid users of media technologies. The adoption of these media can
have significant political, social, and economic implications on Greater
China and present challenges to the current media industry structure
there. The use of the emerging media by overseas Chinese can reconnect
them to the mainland and connect them to the Chinese around the world.


Topics for papers could include, but are by no means limited to:

1. Political, social or economic impact of emerging media on Greater
China and other Chinese communities

2. Public perception of emerging media and their role in politics and
formation of public opinion

3. Comparison of the use of emerging media between Chinese and
non-Chinese markets

4. Comparison of emerging media use in different Chinese markets

5. Business models of emerging media in Chinese markets

6. Market competition and management of emerging media in Chinese markets

7. Comparison of the use of different emerging media by Chinese
consumers

8. Policy and regulatory issues on emerging media in Greater China.

9. Online advertising, online games, and Internet search services
development in Greater China

10. Audience measurement of emerging media in Greater China

11. Methodological issues in studying emerging media in Chinese communities

Both quantitative and qualitative approaches to the issue are welcome. We
especially encourage the collaboration of Chinese scholars and non-Chinese
scholars to submit manuscript to this issue to facilitate exchange of
ideas and offer cross-national perspectives on the issue.

Submissions should conform to the editorial guidelines of the Chinese
Journal of Communication to be found at
http://www.informaworld.com/cjoc under "Instructions for Authors."
Papers for consideration in this special edition should be emailed to:
louisah@bgsu.edu<mailto:louisah@bgsu.edu>.

Papers will undergo a double blind peer review process and should be
submitted by January 15, 2010. Informal enquiries are welcome and please
contact the special issue editor for potential topics. Planned publication
date is December 2010.

Chinese Journal of Communication (CJoC) is a refereed journal serving as
an important international platform for students and scholars in Chinese
communication studies to exchange ideas and research results.
Interdisciplinary in scope, it examines subjects in all Chinese societies
in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Singapore, and the global
Chinese diaspora. The journal will be published quarterly beginning 2010.

The CJoC welcomes research articles using social scientific or humanistic
approaches on such topics as mass communication, journalism studies,
telecommunications, rhetoric, cultural studies, media effects, new
communication technologies, organizational communication, interpersonal
communication, advertising and PR, political communication, communications
law and policy, and so on. Articles employing historical and comparative
analysis focused on traditional Chinese culture as well as contemporary
processes such as globalization, deregulation, and democratization are
also welcome.

Published by Routledge, CJoC is institutionally based at the Communication
Research Centre, the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese
University of Hong Kong . For more information and submission
instructions, please visit
http://www.informaworld.com/cjoc


--

Radhika Gajjala
Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies
Interim Women's Studies Director 2009-2010
233 Shatzel
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik
_________ via / from / thanks to: ___________________
The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list
is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
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Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
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Saturday, September 26, 2009

OpenOffice.org Portable 3.1

OpenOffice.org Portable 3.1
http://portableapps.com/

Packing a number of office applications can be an onerous undertaking, but
this portable version of OpenOffice makes this task a bit easier.
Essentially, users can use this open platform program with any storage
device (such as a USB drive) to take their materials wherever they need to
go. This open source office suite includes an email client, an instant
messaging client, a PDF reader, and so on. This version is compatible with
computers running Windows 2000 and newer. [KMG]

via / from / thanks to:

The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2009.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

Convenient

Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your
bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows
computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.

Open

PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any
hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). The
entire platform is open source built around an open format that any
hardware or software provider can use.

Free

The PortableApps.com Suite and Platform is free. It contains no spyware.
There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is
no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out
your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share.

Employers grappling with social network use

Employers grappling with social network use

[excerpt]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10360849-235.html

Social networking is on the rise, both on and off the job, leaving
companies uncertain how to monitor their use by employees, reports new
survey.

More than 50 percent of companies questioned said they have no policy to
address the use of social networking by employees outside the workplace,
according to a survey released Wednesday by the Society of Corporate
Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.

Typically, companies shy away from restricting an employee's actions off
the job. But businesses are concerned about employees who use social
networking and reveal private details or post inappropriate pictures that
could embarrass the company.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency, English & En Español

Now printable! Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency

http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2009/now-printable-reporters-guide-to-multimedia-proficiency/

Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (PDF; 536 KB)
http://www.jou.ufl.edu/faculty/mmcadams/PDFs/RGMPbook.pdf

Translations
En español (PDF; 600 KB) — translation by María Elena Brizuela, a
journalist and journalism educator based in Córdoba, Argentina. (Posted
Sept. 8, 2009.)
http://www.jou.ufl.edu/faculty/mmcadams/PDFs/RGMPespanol.pdf

Posts in this series in HTPL...
http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2009/rgmp-15-maintain-and-update-your-skills/

* RGMP 1: Read blogs and use RSS
* RGMP 2: Start a blog
* RGMP 3: Buy an audio recorder and learn to use it
* RGMP 4: Start editing audio
* RGMP 5: Listen to podcasts
* RGMP 6: Post an interview (or podcast) on your blog
* RGMP 7: Learn how to shoot decent photos
* RGMP 8: Learn how to crop, tone, and optimize photos
* RGMP 9: Add photos to your blog
* RGMP 10: Learn to use Soundslides
* RGMP 11: Tell a good story with images and sound
* RGMP 12: Learn to shoot video
* RGMP 13: Edit your video with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker
* RGMP 14: Publish your video on your blog

The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks.

For anyone who enjoys the humor of unnecessary quotation marks, and
sharing that humor of "unnecessary" quotation marks.

Facebppk page
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10952466351

Blog
http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com

Monday, September 21, 2009

Media is a Plural: Just Say Yes Men

Fake NYPost paper online at http://nypost-se.com

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Media is a Plural: Just Say Yes Men
From: "MediaChannel.org" <mediachannel@mail.democracyinaction.org>
Date: Mon, September 21, 2009 12:59

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Media is a Plural -- September 21, 2009

Just Say Yes Men
By Rory O'Connor

I've long been a fan for years of the zany duo of performance
artists/political activists known as the Yes Men, ever since their
turn-of-the-century stunt of creating their own "corrected" World Trade
Organization website at GATT.org (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade).
Soon their fake site began to receive real email queries from confused
visitors, including invitations to address various elite groups on behalf
of the WTO. Naturally, and hysterically, the Men responded as if they
actually represented the WTO ? all of which is documented in their very
funny and very pointed 2004 film "The Yes Men."

Now the Men have a new, almost as amusing documentary about to hit movie
screens across America ? "The Yes Men Fix the World," which they
accurately describe as "a screwball true story about two gonzo political
activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their
way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous
pranks. "

But it is in their actual stunts - and not just in their documentation of
them ? that the Yes Men truly excel. Of late they have taken to targeting
the media directly, such as last fall's fake New York Times? which
declared the Iraq War over, Universities to be free, Bike paths expanded ?
and even announced the much-anticipated resignation of NYT Op-Ed apologist
? oops, I mean, columnist - Thomas Friedman.

Now comes their latest effort - this week's stunning "SPECIAL EDITION" New
York Post, trumpeting the headline "WE'RE SCREWED" in large point type.

The Yes Men's latest elaborate media hoax/heist blanketed Manhattan early
Monday morning with a fake "truth-telling tabloid" about climate change
and how it will soon affect New York City ? and the rest of the world?

New Yorkers were met with the appearance of a "special edition" of the
Post highlighting warnings that the city could face "deadly heat waves,
extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within the
next few decades." The most alarming thing about the spoofy newspaper was
that the news within it came from a spooky - but official - City report.

Distributed by thousands of volunteers throughout New York City, the paper
was created "as a wake-up call to action on climate change" by a coalition
of activists. It appeared just a day before a United Nations summit in
which Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will attempt to persuade world leaders
to reduce carbon emissions in the lead-up to December's upcoming climate
conference in Copenhagen. (Ban has called the Copenhagen gathering a
"once-in-a-generation opportunity" to halt the global rise in greenhouse
gas emissions "if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and
the planet.")

Although the 32-page Post is a fake, everything in it is true. "This could
be, and should be, a real New York Post," said Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum.
"Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it
should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the
problem."

The fake Post's cover story reports the real conclusions of a scientific
panel commissioned by the mayor's office to determine the potential
effects of climate change on New York City. (The report, released in
February, received little attention in the real media.) Other articles
described the Pentagon's warnings about global warming; the government's
inadequate response to the crisis ("Congress Cops Out on Climate");
China's alternative energy program ("China's Green Leap Forward Overtakes
U.S."); and how, if the US doesn't quickly pass a strong climate bill, the
crucial Copenhagen climate talks this December could turn out instead to
be a "Flopenhagen."

The paper includes original investigative reporting, such as an article
revealing that Deutsche Bank - which erected a seven-story "carbon
counter" in central Manhattan - not only invests heavily in coal-mining
companies worldwide, but recently entered the business of coal trading
itself. It also displays the world's gloomiest weather page, covering the
next 70 years?rather than just the next 7 days ? and an "Around the World"
section that describes the disproportionate effects of climate change -
such as droughts, floods, famines, water shortages, mass migrations and
conflicts - on the poor. Although they have done little to cause the
problem, developing countries will bear the brunt of its effects.

But all the news in the faux Post isn't bad ? one article ("New York
Fights Back") reports that the Big Apple's carbon emissions are only one
third the national average. There's also a lot of Yes Men-style humor,
including a page of cartoons and a number of pointed but funny ads ? for
sex ("Awesome. No carbon emissions."), tote bags, and even tap water
("Literally comes right out of your faucet!"). A more serious ad promotes
civil disobedience and encourages readers to risk arrest in a planned
global action November 30, just before the conference in Copenhagen.

Scared of the future effects of climate change? Angry at the media's
failures to highlight the problem?? Anxious to do something about it???

Just Say Yes Men!

(Editor's Note: The fake New York Post paper is one of 2500 initiatives
taking place in more than 130 countries, part of the "Global Wake-up Call"
on climate change. For more information, visit www.tcktcktck.org/wakeup or
contact The Yes Men at tabloid@theyesmen.org. To see the New York City
report on climate change click here. Link to video news release:
http://nypost-se.com/video/)

Comment on this post:
http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2009/09/21/just-say-yes-men/

Aviation Safety Network Database of incidents, hijackings and accidents

Aviation Safety Network

Mission Statement

"Providing everyone with a (professional) interest in aviation with
up-to-date, complete and reliable authoritative information on airliner
accidents and safety issues".

Content / scope
The Aviation Safety Network is a private, independent initiative founded
in 1996. On line since January 1996, the Aviation Safety Network covers
accidents and safety issues with regards to airliners, military transport
planes and corporate jets.

The ASN Safety Database contains detailed descriptions of over 10,700
incidents, hijackings and accidents.

Sources
Most of the information contained in the Aviation Safety Network site is
based on information from official sources (authorities, safety boards).
Sources used as a basis for the accident database are aircraft production
lists, ICAO Aircraft Accident Digests since 1952, and NTSB, TSB etc.


http://aviation-safety.net/


Photos
http://aviation-safety.net/photos/
This section contains photos of aircraft taken before the crash; photos
taken after the actual accident and miscellaneous photos (ARFF, emergency
exits, safety placards).

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Your Google docs: Soon in search results?

September 19, 2009 6:31 PM PDT

Your Google docs: Soon in search results?

[excerpt]

Google on Thursday wrote in a blog post
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Docs/thread?tid=0ca72389c9b26ef4&hl=en
that "in about two weeks, we will be launching a change for published
docs. The change will allow published docs that are linked to from a
public Web site to be crawled and indexed, which means they can appear in
search results you see on Google.com and other search engines...This is a
very exciting change as your published docs linked to from public websites
will reach a much wider audience of people."

"Marie" of Google was quick to note that the crawling for search results
"only applies to docs which you explicitly publish using the 'Publish as
Web page' or 'Publish/embed' option, and which are linked to from a
publicly crawled Web page" (documents for which users choose only to
"allow anyone with the link to view" will not get crawled, she wrote,
adding that users can unpublish documents they wish to remain uncrawled).

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10357137-2.html?tag=mncol;posts

Friday, September 18, 2009

"Espresso Book Machine" - Google To Reincarnate Digital Books As Paperbacks

Google To Reincarnate Digital Books As Paperbacks

[excerpt]

http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_13357835

Google is giving 2 million books in its digital library a chance to be
reincarnated as paperbacks. As part of a deal announced Thursday, Google
is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing
machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in
under five minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the Internet
search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer
or an electronic reader like those made by Amazon.com and Sony.

[...]

The "Espresso Book Machine"
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_Book_Machine ] has been around for
several years, but it figures to become a hotter commodity now that it has
access to so many books scanned from some of the world's largest
libraries. And On Demand Books, the Espresso's maker, potentially could
get access to even more hard-to-find books if Google wins court approval
of a class-action settlement giving it the right to sell out-of-print
books.

"This is a seminal event for us," said Dane Neller, On Demand Books' chief
executive, as he oversaw a demonstration of the Espresso Book Machine
Wednesday at Google's Mountain View headquarters.

In the background, some of the books that Google spent the past five years
scanning into a digital format were returning to their paper origins.

[...]


- - - - -

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm

What Gutenberg's press did for Europe in the 15th century, digitization
and the Espresso Book Machine®
will do for the world tomorrow.


Library quality paperbacks at low cost, identical to factory made books,
printed direct from digital files for the reader in minutes, serving a
radically decentralized world-wide multilingual marketplace.

Espresso: something made to order, one at a time, at point of sale, quickly.

Our EBM Locations
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/our_ebm_locations.htm
Video of The Espresso Book Machine 2.0
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/video2.htm
NEWSFLASH: On Demand Books and Google Sign Agreement
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/ODB%20and%20Google%20Press%20Release%2009-17-09.pdf

British Newspapers, 1800-1900

British Newspapers, 1800-1900
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/

The British Library has done historians a tremendous service by creating
this extensive and thoroughly engaging collection of British newspapers from
1800 to 1900. The site contains over two million pages of 19th century
newspapers, though it is worth noting that many of them require the payment
of a fee. Visitors can browse complete articles from the "Penny Illustrated
Paper" and "The Graphic" free of charge, and they should also click on the
"Topical Articles" area. This area contains thematic essays on matters such
as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Napoleonic Wars, and the abolition of slavery. Each
essay also includes access to relevant articles from the newspapers of the
day. This area also includes detailed information on how best to use the
search engine in order to locate items of interest. [KMG]

Via The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2009.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Creative Commons Publishes Study of “Noncommercial Use”

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Forno <rforno@infowarrior.org>
Date: 2009/9/15
Subject: [Air-L] Creative Commons Publishes Study of "Noncommercial Use"
To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org


Creative Commons Publishes Study of "Noncommercial Use"
Mike Linksvayer, September 14th, 2009
San Francisco, California, USA — September 14, 2009

http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/17721

Creative Commons announces the publication of Defining "Noncommercial": A
Study of How the Online Population Understands "Noncommercial Use." The
report details the results of a research study launched in September 2008
to explore differences between commercial and noncommercial uses of
content found online, as those uses are understood by various communities
and in connection with a wide variety of content. Generous support for the
study was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The study investigated understandings of noncommercial use and the
Creative Commons "NC" license term through online surveys of content
creators and users in the U.S., open access polls of global "Creative
Commons Friends and Family," interviews with thought leaders, and focus
groups with participants from around the world who create and use a wide
variety of online content and media. The research behind Defining
"Noncommercial" was conducted by Netpop Research, under advisement from
academics and a working group consisting of several Creative Commons
jurisdiction project members as well as Creative Commons staff and board
members.

Creative Commons provides free copyright licenses to creators who want to
grant the public certain permissions to use their works, in advance and
without the need for one-to-one contact between the user and the creator.
"Noncommercial" or "NC" is one of four license terms that creators may
choose to apply to CC-licensed content.

Creative Commons noncommercial licenses preclude use of a work "in any
manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial
advantage or private monetary compensation." The majority of respondents
(87% of creators, 85% of users) replied that the definition was
"essentially the same as" (43% of creators, 42% of users) or "different
from but still compatible with" (44% of creators, 43% of users) theirs.
Only 7% of creators and 11% of users replied that the term was "different
from and incompatible with" their definition.

Other highlights from the study include the rating by content creators and
users of different uses of online content as either "commercial" or
"noncommercial" on a scale of 1-100, where 1 is "definitely noncommercial"
and 100 is "definitely commercial." On this scale, creators and users
(84.6 and 82.6, respectively) both rate uses in connection with online
advertising generally as "commercial." However, more specific use cases
revealed that many interpretations are fact-specific. For example,
creators and users gave the specific use case "not-for-profit organization
uses work on its site, organization makes enough money from ads to cover
hosting costs" ratings of 59.2 and 71.7, respectively.

On the same scale, creators and users (89.4 and 91.7, respectively) both
rate uses in which money is made as being commercial, yet again those
ratings are lower in use cases specifying cost recovery or use by
not-for-profits. Finally, both groups rate "personal or private" use as
noncommercial, though creators did so less strongly than users (24.3 and
16.0, respectively, on the same scale).

In open access polls, CC's global network of "friends and family" rate
some uses differently from the U.S. online population—although direct
empirical comparisons may not be drawn from these data. For example,
creators and users in these polls rate uses by not-for-profit
organizations with advertisements as a means of cost recovery at 35.7 and
40.3, respectively—somewhat more noncommercial. They also rate "personal
or private" use as strongly noncommercial—8.2 and 7.8, respectively—again
on a scale of 1-100 where 1 is "definitely noncommercial" and 100 is
"definitely commercial."

"As more people have begun to make, share, and use content online, the
question of what constitutes a 'commercial use' versus a 'noncommercial
use' has become increasingly important to understand," said Josh Crandall,
President of Netpop Research. "With this study, we were particularly
interested to see that—contrary to what many might believe—there is little
variation between creators and users in the perceived 'commerciality' of
particular uses of copyrighted content. Furthermore, where they do differ,
users tend to have a more conservative outlook than creators. This study
provides useful data and perspectives—from both members of the general
public and people who work closely in the world of copyright—that can help
people begin to think more clearly about the issue."

The study report and its associated data are available at
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Defining_Noncommercial, where members of
the public can contribute feedback about the report. Defining
"Noncommercial" is published under a Creative Commons Attribution license,
and the research data is available under a CC0 public domain waiver.

"We're excited that the results of this important project will be
available for all kinds of uses—including commercial use—by anyone," said
Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons. "We encourage researchers and our
community to use what we've done and expand this investigation further,
building upon the data we collected and incorporating more perspectives
from Creative Commons adopters worldwide."

In the next years, possibly as soon as 2010, Creative Commons expects to
formally launch a multi-year, international process for producing the next
version (4.0) of the six main Creative Commons licenses. This process will
include examination of whether the noncommercial definition included in
licenses with the NC term should be modified or if other means of
clarifying noncommercial use under the CC licenses should be pursued. The
results of Defining "Noncommercial" and subsequent research will be an
important thread informing this process.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that
promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether
owned or in the public domain. Through its free copyright licenses,
Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and educators the
choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the
"all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to enable a
voluntary "some rights reserved" approach. Creative Commons was built with
and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the
Center for the Public Domain, Google, the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, Omidyar Network, Red Hat,
and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of the
public. For more information about supporting Creative Commons, please
contact development@creativecommons.org.

About Netpop Research, LLC

Netpop Research, LLC is a San Francisco-based strategic market research
firm that specializes in online media, digital entertainment and
user-generated content trends. Netpop Research has fielded numerous
studies for major profit and nonprofit entities, and is the creator of the
Netpop tracking study of Internet usage among broadband consumers in the
United States and China.

Contact

Mike Linksvayer
Vice President
Creative Commons
ml@creativecommons.org
+1 415 369 8480

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/about/press/
__________________ Via / From / Thanks to: ___________________
The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list
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Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
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Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
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Sunday, September 13, 2009

Rise of the Professional Blogger & increasingly mythical - pajama-wearing classes.

The Rise of the Professional Blogger
by Benjamin Carlson
The Atlantic
September 11, 2009
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909u/professional-bloggers

[excerpt]

In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books,
Michael Massing articulates a point made so often about
the Web that it's nearly catechismal. Blogs, he says,
have torn down the power structure of old media.
"Decentralization and democratization" are the law of
the land, offering "a podium to Americans of all ages
and backgrounds to contribute." This is a notion that
bloggers and web gurus have been touting for years. In
his 2006 book, An Army of Davids, for example,
"Instapundit" blogger Glenn Reynolds argued that
"markets and technology" empowered "ordinary people to
beat big media." And this June, internet sage Clay
Shirky assured an audience at a TED event that the old
model, where "professionals broadcast messages to
amateurs," is "slipping away."

But is this really true? Among some of the biggest
bloggers, this notion is increasingly seen as suspect.
In early July, Laura McKenna, a widely respected and
longtime blogger, argued on her site, 11D, that blogging
has perceptibly changed over the six years she's been at
it. Many of blogging's heavy hitters, she observed, have
ended up "absorbed into some other professional
enterprise." Meanwhile, newer or lesser-known bloggers
aren't getting the kind of links and attention they used
to, which means that "good stuff" is no longer "bubbling
to the top." Her post prompted a couple of the medium's
most legendary, best-established hands to react: Matthew
Yglesias (formerly of The Atlantic, now of
ThinkProgress), confirmed that blogging has indeed
become "institutionalized," and Ezra Klein (formerly of
The American Prospect, now of The Washington Post)
concurred, "The place has professionalized." Almost
everyone weighing in agreed that blogging has become
more corporate, more ossified, and increasingly
indistinguishable from the mainstream media. Even Glenn
Reynolds had a slight change of heart, admitting in a
June interview that the David-and-Goliath dynamic is
eroding as blogs have become "more big-media-ish." All
this has led Matthew Hindman, author of The Myth of
Digital Democracy, to declare that "The era when
political comment on the Web is dominated by solo
bloggers writing for free is gone."

[...]

Blogging, then, seems to be an industry on the cusp of
maturity. Nick Carr compares its evolution to that of
ham radio in the early twentieth century. Out of the
amateur hubbub emerged self-made stars, who were then
hired by fledgling networks that eventually grew into
CBS, NBC and ABC. In much the same way, blogging
celebrities have been snatched up by old and new
conglomerates, while a sudden heart attack in the old-
media world has put commercial blogging enterprises into
a startlingly advantageous position. To wit, in the
midst of a major downturn in advertising profits across
most media, revenue to Gawker's network of eight blogs
jumped 45% in the first half of this year.

Clearly, a new establishment is taking shape. It seems
ever more likely that the next media kingpins will come
from the proverbial - and increasingly mythical -
pajama-wearing classes.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Call For Submissions / New Adventures in Sound Art / HOME - Deep Wireless, Sound Travels & SOUNDplay Festivals

Call For Submissions / New Adventures in Sound Art / HOME - Deep Wireless,
Sound Travels & SOUNDplay Festivals / Toronto, ON / Deadline Date:
Wednesday, September 30, 2009

New Adventures in Sound Art invites artists of all ages and nationalities
to submit works on the theme HOME for consideration in 2010 future
programming for the annual Deep Wireless, Sound Travels, and SOUNDplay
festivals, produced by New Adventures in Sound Art in Toronto, Canada.

Artists may submit works in one or all of the following four categories:
1) Radio Art,
2) Electroacoustic Music & Sound Art,
3) Videomusic and
4) Installation Art (Note: please send separate submission forms for each
entry).

Individual interpretations or variations on the theme HOME are encouraged,
but should be realized with sound as the primary component.

All submitted works must respond in some way to the theme HOME in order to
be considered for 2010 NAISA programming.

1) Radio Art (for Deep Wireless)
The Radio Art category is for works conceived for radio or that use radio
and other wireless technology in their creation and that play with the
medium. Works submitted to this category must be less than 60 minutes in
duration. Special consideration will be given to 1 minute radio art pieces
for broadcast as well as 1 page proposals for collaboration on translocal
broadcast performances.

Pieces will be selected for broadcast within Canada and on several
international radio stations in May 2010 as part of the Deep Wireless
Festival of Radio and Transmission Art.

Both Canadian and International radio art submissions will be considered
for inclusion in the following:

-The Deep Wireless 7 radio art compilation CD
-The Radio Art Interventions (1 minute pieces played guerilla-style on
radio stations during the Deep Wireless festival)
-The Radio Art Salon - a listening gallery of radio art works exhibited
for the month of May.

2) Electroacoustic Music & Sound Art (for Sound Travels)
The Electroacoustic Music & Sound Art category is for multi-channel and
stereo works less than 20 minutes in duration and conceived for concert
performance or presentation in the Sound Travels festival of sound art.
Preferred formats for performance presentation include 5.1, octaphonic, 12
and 16-channel formats in both acousmatic (tape), live and mixed formats.
Please indicate in the notes the intended format of presentation and any
required instrumentation or specialized equipment.

3) Videomusic (for SOUNDplay)
The Videomusic category is for works that explores non-narrative
abstraction with equal emphasis on sound and image. Submitted works will
be considered for video screenings with either stereo or multi-channel
playback. Submitted works will be considered for screenings in either a
performance venue or a small-size gallery alongside other works selected
from this call for submissions.

4) Installation Art (for Deep Wireless, Sound Travels or SOUNDplay)
Installation proposals of previously realized works for site-specific and
gallery installations with no fixed duration will be considered for
presentation as part of Deep Wireless, Sound Travels or SOUNDplay.
Site-specific works can be for indoor or outdoor locations. Works can use
multichannel or single channel playback and may incorporate any number of
media, but must feature original sound as a primary element. Preference
will be given to small to medium scale interactive works that appeal to
all ages. Please attach a list of the necessary equipment required to
mount the installation and which of these items can be supplied by the
artist. Submissions should include audio, video or audio-video
documentation of previously realized versions of the work.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit a completed submission form (in digital format if possible)
along with the proposed works on CD or DVD.

For multichannel works, please include a stereo reduction for reference
purposes only. For video works, please include a DVD copy for reference
only. Screening and multi-channel masters will be requested later if the
work is to be programmed. For installation works or performance proposals,
please attach a list of required equipment with indications of equipment
that can be supplied by the artist.

Materials will not be returned. Please don't send original copies.

Submissions must be postmarked no later than September 30, 2009 and mailed
to: New Adventures in Sound Art
601 Christie Street #252
Toronto ON M6G 4C7

Visit http://www.naisa.ca for more information.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Web-tracking tool provides datasets of web-browsing activities for researchers

Web-tracking tool provides datasets of web-browsing activities for
researchers

------------

A group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has
launched a new project, eyebrowse <http://eyebrowse.csail.mit.edu/>, which
allows you to record, visualize and share your web browsing history in
real-time.

Eyebrowse is a Firefox plug-in that records visits to websites that you
choose to track on an individual basis. Your data is presented on your
eyebrowse profile in the form of interesting and insightful visualizations,
allowing you to gain personal and social insights and catch a glimpse of what
Google knows about
you<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/337791/What_Google_Knows_About_You>.


Currently, most web browsing data is collected by search engine companies
(Google, Microsoft, Alexa…), which is hardly available for public domain
research. Eyebrowse seeks to fill this gap by providing a public repository
of web trails. By making this data available, we hope to support the
creation of open public services that analyze and report major trends on the
web, services that support personalization of the web through collaborative
filtering and other crowd-sourcing techniques, and other as-yet unimagined
services that require a mass of data about the world's interaction with the
web.

Check out some real <http://eyebrowse.csail.mit.edu/profile/emax/>
live<http://eyebrowse.csail.mit.edu/graphs/zamiang/>
profiles <http://eyebrowse.csail.mit.edu/users/> and our page
stats<http://eyebrowse.csail.mit.edu/search/>graphs, which are
accessible from any page via the plug-in
.

Eyebrowse is an open source project
hosted<http://code.google.com/p/list-it/>on Google Code implemented
using Django, Javascript and HTML5. It is
actively seeking users for feedback and beta testing.

happy surfing!
eyebrowse team
http://eyebrowse.csail.mit.edu/

Sunday, September 06, 2009

UbuWeb ... great audio files & more... it's the polar opposite of MySpace

UbuWeb

Via http://www.ubu.com/

What is your philosophy?
See our manifesto.
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index.html
[Version française]
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index_fr.html
[Versione Italiana]
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index_ital.html

http://www.ubu.com/resources/podcast.html

[excerpt]

Produced by The Poetry Foundation http://poetryfoundation.org/ , UbuWeb is
pleased to announce the latest in its podcast series, focusing on a dozen
of Ubu's hidden treasures, highlighting audio works that you really should
know about about but most likely don't. With this podcast, we kick off a
series focusing on the sounds of different regions. Here the focus is on
the very rich scene emerging out of Los Angeles. Blending genres such as
punk rock, visual art, performance art, experimental music and innovative
poetry, we focus mostly on the late 1970s. Featured here are Chris Burden,
Paul McCarthy, The Kipper Kids, Mike Kelley with Sonic Youth, John
Baldessari, David Antin, Eleanor Antin, the Los Angeles Free Music
Society, and Benjamin Weismann. You can subscribe to our podcast here.

http://poetryfoundation.org/podcast_avantgarde.xml


Frequently Asked Questions

http://www.ubu.com/resources/faq.html

[excerpt]

1. When did UbuWeb Start?
2. How is UbuWeb funded?
3. Can I get involved?
4. Can I use something posted on UbuWeb on my site, in a paper, in a
project, etc.
5. How do I purchase something from your site?
6. What is your policy concerning posting copyrighted material?
7. How do I download MP3s?
8. I only have RealPlayer. How come you mostly have MP3s?
9. Are you affiliated with a university?
10. Why are your pages in English? / Why are your pages not in English?
11. Who are you?
12. Where are you located?
13. Why don't you respond to my emails?
14. I'm interested in advertising on UbuWeb. How do I go about this?
15. Why isn't new content posted every day?
16. I'd like to receive notices of UbuWeb updates. How do I do this?
17. Do you have an UbuWeb listserve?
18. What system do you design UbuWeb on? What browser is UbuWeb optimized
for?
19. What is your philosophy?
20. Why is there no Alfred Jarry on UbuWeb?
21. What happened to the image of the nude woman at the top of the Artist
Index page?
22. Why won't you look at my MySpace page?
[...]
Why won't you look at my MySpace page?
It's ugly, crowded, filled with ads, blares music at you, and nine times
out of ten, crashes our browser. Really, it's the polar opposite of
UbuWeb. Just as in meatspace there are certain streets you never walk
down, so in cyberspace, we assidiously avoid the MySpace mall. No ifs ands
or buts. Sorry.


When did UbuWeb Start?
UbuWeb was founded in November of 1996, initially as a repository for
visual, concrete and, later, sound poetry. Over the years, UbuWeb has
embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond. Its parameters continue
to expand in all directions.

[...]

I'm interested in advertising on UbuWeb. How do I go about this?
You don't. UbuWeb is completely commercial-free and it will always stay
that way.

Why isn't new content posted every day?
UbuWeb is an archive, not a blog. It has accumulated slowly and steadily
and shall continue to far into the future.

I'd like to receive notices of UbuWeb updates. How do I do this?
UbuWeb refuses to advertise or promote itself. Most of all, we detest the
idea of filling inboxes with more unwanted material. A few times a year,
we post our updates to select mailing lists; that's what they're for,
aren't they? For UbuWeb updates, best to just keep checking back on the
homepage, where notices of all new content appears.

[...]

What is your philosophy?
See our manifesto.
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index.html
[Version française]
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index_fr.html
[Versione Italiana]
http://www.ubu.com/resources/index_ital.html

[...]

ABOUT UBUWEB

Concrete poetry's utopian pan-internationalist bent was clearly
articulated by Max Bense in 1965 when he stated, "…concrete poetry does
not separate languages; it unites them; it combines them. It is this part
of its linguistic intention that makes concrete poetry the first
international poetical movement." Its ideogrammatic self-contained,
exportable, universally accessible content mirrors the utopian
pan-linguistic dreams of cross-platform efforts on today's Internet;
Adobe's PDF (portable document format) and Sun System's Java programming
language each strive for similarly universal comprehension. The pioneers
of concrete poetry could only dream of the now-standard tools used to make
language move and morph, stream and scream, distributed worldwide
instantaneously at little cost.

Essentially a gift economy, poetry is the perfect space to practice
utopian politics. Freed from profit-making constraints or cumbersome
fabrication considerations, information can literally "be free": on
UbuWeb, we give it away and have been doing so since 1996. We publish in
full color for pennies. We receive submissions Monday morning and publish
them Monday afternoon. UbuWeb's work never goes "out of print." UbuWeb is
a never-ending work in progress: many hands are continually building it on
many platforms.

[...]

China Google boss departure reignites debate over censorship

China Google boss departure reignites debate over censorship
They were never going to be the easiest of bedfellows. When Google, the
modern face of Western freedom, first decided to launch a censored version
of its search engine inside communist China, civil liberties campaigners
were appalled.

[excerpt]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6143553/China-Google-boss-departure-reignites-debate-over-censorship.html


That was in 2006. Yesterday the sudden and unexpected resignation of
Kai-Fu Lee, the head of Google China, reignited the debate about how a
business model built on providing unfettered access to information can
possibly thrive in a regime that thrives on control - and whether it
should try to.

Mr Lee, 47, who was born in Taiwan but educated in the US, is seen in
China as an Alan Sugar-type business celebrity - and after four years at
the helm was said yesterday to be leaving to start a venture capital fund
to help young Chinese entrepreneurs start new web-based businesses.

But his surprise departure from a high-flying role in one of the world's
most influential companies has led inevitably to new questions about the
tensions between Google and China's communist leadership.

It follows 12 months in which Google China, despite its decision to accept
restrictions on its search engine to conform with communist censorship,
has come under increasingly hostile fire from the Beijing government.

The company denied that Mr Lee's departure was a sign of anything other
than his desire to embark on something new. But on his blog he wrote that
he wanted to be "actively involved in the work and to have full control
over it" - a hint, some suspect, that he did not feel completely in charge
of events.

Mathew McDougall, the chief executive of SinoTech Group, China's largest
independent digital marketing agency, told The Sunday Telegraph: "He seems
like a guy who tried very hard and in the end got frustrated in the role.

"Since he arrived at Google he's had a difficult job - and myriad bad
publicity in the last quarter. None of that has made his life easier and
it looks as if he's gone off to do something for himself that is free of
the constraints that come with trying to do business in the Chinese
internet market."

In January, three years after Google China (Google.cn) was launched,
Beijing authorities fired a warning shot.

As part of an initiative "to purify the internet's cultural environment"
the government accused the search engine of failing to use effective
measures to block searches for "vulgar, pornographic sites".

In June, state censors went further, announcing "punitive measures" over
the same concern, and blocking all access to the site for several hours. A
spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry accused the search engine of
spreading "large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and
pornographic, seriously violating China's relevant laws and regulations".

Google, which had been careful to heavily self-censor during the 20th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre a few weeks earlier,
swallowed the ticking off.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

TRAILER: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' - OPENS NATIONWIDE OCTOBER 2nd!

'CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY' - In Theaters October 2nd

"It's a crime story. But it's also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it's also a love story. Only it's about an abusive relationship.

"It's not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make.

"It's a comedy." — Michael Moore

Check back for updates at http://www.michaelmoore.com

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Learn From Rogue Tweeters...

Learn From Rogue Tweeters:
7 Steps to Promoting Your Organization in Twitter
By Lisa Gualtieri, Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine

[excerpt]

http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=91-1

1. Try Twitter to learn about it. Follow Mark's lead at NIOSH and try
Twitter for yourself. Forrester Research CEO George Colony agrees: "You
can't understand Twitter, Facebook, or blogging by reading an article in a
magazine [even here]… you won't be able to truly understand how they could
change your business unless you actually use them."

2. Become a bit of a rogue. Forget policies and guidelines and instead
bring to your own Twitter use the initiative and conscientiousness that
Mark brings to his.

3. Commit the time required to tweet regularly. David Armano blogged for
Harvard Business Review that the "economics of using social media in
business requires the participation of people to fuel it. It is not simply
enabled by technology that maintains itself." Mark's production and
sustained use is undoubtedly greater if his Twitter time is considered
part of his job.

4. Tweet about information that is relevant and timely to attract and
retain followers. Good tweets come from multiple sources and it takes
diligence to locate them. Setting Google Alerts can help. Have a topic mix
that appeals to your current and desired constituency; topical articles
are much more likely to be retweeted than what you ate for lunch!

5. Pace your tweets. Tweet too often, and you'll lose followers. Tweet too
infrequently and risk being overlooked. Mark's experience is that multiple
times each day works. Also be sensitive to when your potential and
existing followers are online.

6. Use other channels to get more followers. Promote your Twitter
participation widely.

7. Consider how Twitter fits into your overall social media strategy.
Exploit Twitter's unique capabilities; Mark could follow the lesson of
many businesses that monitor customer reactions on Twitter to identify
safety topics that NIOSH doesn't currently address. Finally, Twitter, like
other social media, is constantly evolving, so adapt with it.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

How Teens Use Media

How Teens Use Media
This June 1 2009 report highlights research by The Nielsen Company about
how to reach the "wired" teenager. It gives data on media being used by
youth (primarily on United States (US) youth ages 10-19) and recommends
reaching them "for everything from consumer packaged goods marketing to
the democratic process" through media used to reach adults. As stated
here: "The notion that teens are too busy texting and Twittering to be
engaged with traditional media is exciting, but false....To best engage
this segment in marketing, civic and cultural pursuits, you must...examine
the nuances of their media behavior as you would any demographic
segment... it could mean the terms of engagement they so often want: to be
treated more like adults."
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/297837

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

FYI - Fwd: Two Theatre Arts Workshops at The Banff Centre

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Boris Atamanenko
Date: 2009/8/24
Subject: Theatre Arts Workshops at The Banff Centre
To:


The Banff Centre [arts_info@banffcentre.ca] has issued the following
program announcement:

Theatre Arts Workshops at The Banff Centre:
Banff Stage Combat Intensive

Program dates: October 10 - October 12, 2009
Registration deadline: September 25, 2009

Engage in a rigorous exploration of stage combat techniques required for a professional performing career. Designed for artists working in theatre, participants will learn fundamental skills needed to perform violent action in a credible fashion by working with 35-year veteran fight master Jean-Pierre Fournier.

Play Finding with Daniel MacIvor
Theatre Arts Master Class Series

Program dates: December 11 – December 13, 2009
Application deadline: October 23, 2009

Join celebrated playwright Daniel MacIvor and investigate the process of creating and developing original text — whether it be a monologue, dialogue, a fully-formed idea, or a vague notion. Through specially designed conversations and exercises, MacIvor will lead and inform playwrights and actors on how to take their work to the next level.

View more information on these and other Theatre Arts programs:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/theatre/programs/

For more information and to apply:
The Banff Centre, Office of the Registrar
107 Tunnel Mountain Drive, Box 1020
Banff, Alberta T1L 1H5, CANADA
1-800-565-9989 or 1-403-762-6180
arts_info@banffcentre.ca
www.banffcentre.ca

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Giving Voice: Oral Testimony

Oral Traditions Manual

The Oral Traditions Manual is a very useful tool for teachers and students interested in conducting oral history research and interviews. This detailed manual is available as a printable pdf download.

http://www.pwnhc.ca/teach/teachers/online_resources.asp

Welcome to oral traditions research!

"GETTING STARTED IN ORAL TRADITIONS RESEARCH"

Text: Elisa Hart - Illustrations: Wally Wolfe

http://www.pwnhc.ca/research/otm/index.asp

There are many people in the Northwest Territories who want to try to save the knowledge that is part of the oral tradition of their culture. People are realizing that if they do not do this, then much of this information will be lost forever. This manual was written for adults and students in the Northwest Territories who want to do their own research, but need help getting started. There is a lot to learn. This manual provides you with an outline of how it can be done using audio recording equipment.

http://www.pwnhc.ca/research/downloads/OralTraditionsManual.pdf

Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre:

Main Phone #: (867) 873-7551
Main Fax #: (867) 873-0205

Mailing Address:
Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre
PO Box 1320
Yellowknife, NT
X1A 2L9

Street Address:
4750 48th Street
Yellowknife, NT

NWT Archives Phone #: (867) 873-7698
NWT Archives Fax #: (867) 873-0660



[ - - - - - - - - ]



Giving Voice:
A Practical Guide to the Implementation of Oral Testimony Projects

by Olivia Bennett

http://www.panos.org.uk/?lid=320

Published in 1999, this manual from Panos is meant for those implementing community-based oral testimony projects in the development context. Drawing on several years' fieldwork with grassroots and community-based organisations, it covers all aspects of such projects - from the initial planning to reviewing and evaluating the process and the products.

Designed to help those with little or no previous experience of such work, it also contains ideas for running a training workshop. Throughout the manual there are checklists, summaries of key points, and ideas for discussion which have been designed to be used or adapted as handouts for interviewers, and/or during a training workshop.
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/177094
---

GEORGE LESSARD
Information, Communications and Media Specialist
451 Norseman Dr.
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
X1A 2J1, Canada

Yellowknife Land Line # (867) 873-2662
Yellowknife Cell # (867) 445-9193
SKYPE: themediamentor

Online Business Card:
http://lessardcard.notlong.com
http://mediamentor.ca

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Developing Asia Journalism Training and Awards

---

Developing Asia Journalism Training and Awards

Background

This year's Developing Asia Journalism Awards (DAJA) will include a short
training course for a group of 20 journalists from ADB DMCs across Asia
and the Pacific. The program is designed not only to enhance participating
journalists' knowledge on various development issues, but more
importantly, to recognize and emphasize their crucial role in fostering
greater awareness of key development issues, and providing sound
information to the public that they may be empowered to make better
socio-economic choices.

The poverty impact of the global financial crisis and government responses
to the crisis, as well as the role of development journalism in promoting
greater economic and financial literacy will be the main issues of
discussion for the 4-day workshop. The program will also profile ADB and
ADBI's work on adaptation to climate change and public private
partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure development. Practical sessions
designed to help journalists prepare clear, accessible stories that will
provide ordinary citizens with a better understanding of the economic
realities and development issues facing their countries are also included
in the program.

The objectives of this training course and the awards are to: i) enhance
the understanding and further develop the skills of journalists in Asia by
equipping them with sound and current knowledge on key economic and
development issues, and; ii) to enable and encourage them to actively
promote public awareness through informative, responsible, and empowering
journalism.

An announcement has been made to call for submission of articles related
to four issues/categories, namely,
i) poverty impact of the global financial crisis;
ii) government responses to the global financial crisis;
iii) infrastructure development;
and
iv) climate change adaptation.
The top 20 articles will be selected by a panel of judges and their
authors/writers will be invited to the four day training program that will
be concluded with an awards ceremony.

Winners and runners up of each of the four categories
including two special prizes for
- Best Development Journalist of the Year
and
- Best Young Development Journalist of the Year
will be selected and awarded at the dinner
at the Foreign Correspondents Club.

Outputs

Enhanced monitoring, analytical, and reporting skills on economic and
other development issues for Asian journalists
Greater public awareness of economic and other development issues through
the work of the participating journalists
Better public and corporate governance in Asia and the Pacific

Participants

Journalists from ADB's developing member countries

Partners

Asian Development Bank headquarters
and
ADB Japanese Representative Office.

Event Details


Event: Developing Asia Journalism Training and Awards
Venue: ADBI, Tokyo
Start date: 20 October 2009
End Date: 23 October 2009

For more information:
http://www.adbi.org/event/3263.daja.awards.2009/


[via / thanks to:]


Bazlu
_______________________
AHM. Bazlur Rahman-S21BR
Chief Executive Officer
Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication(BNNRC)
&
Member, Strategy Council
UN-Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN GAID)

House: 13/1, Road:2, Shaymoli, Dhaka-1207
Post Box: 5095, Dhaka 1205 Bangladesh

Phone: 88-02-9130750, 88-02-9138501
01711881647 Fax: 88-02-9138501-105

E-mail: ceo@bnnrc.net, bnnrc@bd.drik.net
www.bnnrc.net

___________________
[and]
____________________________
Asiapacific-general mailing list
Asiapacific-general@lists.amarc.org
http://lists.amarc.org/mailman/listinfo/asiapacific-general

-30-

Thursday, August 20, 2009

"...How many own your name as a domain name? ... Your online presence ..."

"...How many own your name as a domain name? ... Your online presence
should show who you are, your interests and background, and showcase your
best professional work. ..."

The Need to Develop Their Personal Brand

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/08/journalism-students-need-to-develop-their-personal-brand231.html

[excerpt]

As a journalism professor, I have found there is one thing guaranteed to
set off a flurry of frenzied activity in the classroom. It has nothing to
do with exams or story deadlines. Rather, it is prompted by a simple
question to students: How many own your name as a domain name?

This seemingly innocuous question acts as a trigger, sending students
online to see if someone else with the same name has snatched up the web
address. A lesson on online research methods turns into "how to buy a
domain name," or more often, "what do I do if someone else has my domain
name?"

This is no trivial matter. Having a website that reflects your
professional identity is your digital calling card. Your online presence
should show who you are, your interests and background, and showcase your
best professional work. Or to put it another way, your personal brand as a
journalist.

In the journalism of today, the personal brand is becoming increasingly
central to the prospects of a young person starting out on a life of
reporting. So it is important for students at journalism school, and those
starting in the fall, to develop the professional brand that will set them
apart come graduation.

Some reporters may bristle at the idea of thinking of themselves as a
brand, considering it the equivalent of selling out. This overlooks the
fact that a journalist's identity has always been a part of the job,
otherwise why have bylines?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

"60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt died today

"60 Minutes" creator Don Hewitt died today

** REMEMBERING DON HEWITT

"60 Minutes" creator Don Hewitt died today at his home in Bridgehampton,
N.Y., after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He joined CBS in 1948,
directing the first network television newscast in May of that year.
Hewitt also produced the first televised presidential debate between
then-candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960.

Hewitt later went to CBS and gained permission to try his idea for a
one-hour broadcast that mixed hard news and feature stories, which debuted
in September 1968 as "60 Minutes." He ran the broadcast until 2004, which
under Hewitt won 73 Emmys and nine Peabody awards.

Tonight on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, we will air an excerpt of a 2004
NewsHour interview between Hewitt and former NewsHour correspondent
Terence Smith.

Visit http://www.pbs.org/newshour/topic/media after 9:00 PM Eastern time
tonight for more information on this segment.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Segments highlighted on Media Watch Alert are scheduled to
air but subject to change.

Research on Flickr / Biblio on Flickr Research

A. Cox from U. Sheffield wrote a couple of papers
(http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/staff/cox.html);
Cox, A. (2008) "Flickr: A case study of Web2.0" Aslib Proceedings 60 (5)
493-516.

Cox, A., Clough, P. & Marlow, J.(2008) "Flickr: a first look at user
behaviour in the context of photography as serious leisure." Information
Research 13 (1)
http://informationr.net/ir/13-1/paper336.html.

Julia Davies wrote also a couple of papers
(http://www.shef.ac.uk/education/staff/academic/davies.html)
Davies, J (2007) `Display; Identity and the Everyday: self-presentation
through digital image sharing.´ In: Discourse, Studies in the Cultural
Politics of Education. 28:4

Davies, J. (2006) `Affinities and beyond!! Developing ways of seeing in
online spaces´. In e-learning- Special Issue: Digital Interfaces. Vol.3
issue 2. Pages 217-234. A

Edgar Gómez – doing a PhD on Flickr at Open University of Catalonia -
Internet Interdisciplinary Institute and visiting research at Oxford
Internet Institute:
http://tesisantitesis.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=530370679

Rachel Cobcroft – doing PhD on Flickr at Queensland State Archives /
Creative Commons Australia
http://www.flickr.com/people/felix42/
http://www.facebook.com/rachel.cobcroft

Eric Meyer wrote an article on Flickr:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1353879

Ingrid Erickson (http://www.ssrc.org/staff/erickson-ingrid/) her
dissertation integrated quite a bit of research on Flickr.

Jean Burgess (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)' work on
vernacular creativity and Flickr. Look at CreativityMachine
http://creativitymachine.net/ for some of her work, including a
significant part of her dissertation project that focused on Flickr.

Mor Naaman studies it. A list of his publications in which you can find a
few about Flickr is avaleble at:
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~mor/research.html

Liza Potts <odu.edu> conducted research on Flickr. Published articles
include:
Potts, L. (2009). "Using Actor Network Theory to Trace and Improve
Multimodal Communication Design." Technical Communication Quarterly, 18
(3).
Potts, L. (2009). "Designing for Disaster: Social Software Use in Times of
Crisis." International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge
Development. 1 (2), 33-46.
Potts, L. (2009). "Peering into Disaster: Social Software Use from the
Indian Ocean Earthquake to the Mumbai Bombings." Proceedings of the
International Professional Communication Conference. Hawaii: IEEE.
Potts, L. (2008). "Designing with Actor Network Theory: A New Method for
Modeling Holistic Experience." Proceedings of the International
Professional Communication Conference. Montreal: IEEE.

Collected by
--
Mayo Fuster Morell
E-mail: lilaroja@gmx.net
Skype: mayoneti

http://www.onlinecreation.info
http://www.openelibrary.info
http://www.openesf.net
http://www.networked-politics.info
http://www.euromovements.info

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

JOB: BBC World Service Trust - Country Director, Nepal

Opportunity Details

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/300321

The BBC World Service Trust is looking for a Country Director to run its
operation in Nepal. The successful candidate will have experience in both
media and international development. You will need to demonstrate a good
understanding of the specific issues facing Nepal, particularly with
reference to governance and health - the two themes in which the Trust is
currently working in the country.

The Trust is the international charity of the BBC. Our record in Nepal is
one of innovation. You will have the skills to lead an award-winning
local team to build on successes in creating programmes with impact for
the people of Nepal.

Giving Voice: A Practical Guide to the Implementation of Oral Testimony Projects

Giving Voice: A Practical Guide to the Implementation of Oral Testimony
Projects
by Olivia Bennett
Published in 1999, this manual from Panos is meant for those implementing
community-based oral testimony projects in the development context.
Drawing on several years' fieldwork with grassroots and community-based
organisations, it covers all aspects of such projects - from the initial
planning to reviewing and evaluating the process and the products.
Designed to help those with little or no previous experience of such work,
it also contains ideas for running a training workshop. Throughout the
manual there are checklists, summaries of key points, and ideas for
discussion which have been designed to be used or adapted as handouts for
interviewers, and/or during a training workshop.
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/177094

Outside the Indigenous Lens: Zapatistas and Autonomous Video-Making

In this article and book chapter on the use of video among the Zapatista
communities of Southern Chiapas, Mexico, the author states that over the
past ten years, CMP/Promedios has trained over 200 indigenous men and
women in basic video production; built and equipped four Regional Media
Centers in Zapatista territory with digital video production,
post-production, audio, and satellite internet access; enabled the
production of 24 videos (as of 2008) for international distribution; and
provided the means for hundreds of videos utilised internally by the
indigenous communities in Chiapas. All of these productions, whether made
for community use or for international distribution, go through some type
of community consensus about topics and content.

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/296049/307

POLL: How central to democracy are newspapers?

Please VOTE in our POLL:


How central to democracy are newspapers - some of which are being lost to
budget cuts and other changes - as opposed to blogs, YouTube, emails, text
messaging, twittering, and the like?

* Pivotal - informed public debate is impossible without this kind of
quality platform and trained journalistic practice.
* Of some importance - we need both traditional newspapers and new media
voices/venues to sustain conversations conducive to transparency.
* Unimportant - the internet and other technologies have enabled
participation on the part of both citizens and journalists by trade,
making open journalistic debate both possible and popular. This is the
essence of democracy.

VOTE and COMMENT at
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/288615/348

~

RESULTS thus far (August 14):

46%: Pivotal - informed public debate is impossible without this kind of
quality platform and trained journalistic practice.

41%: Of some importance - we need both traditional newspapers and new
media voices/venues to sustain conversations conducive to transparency.

14%: Unimportant - the internet and other technologies have enabled
participation on the part of both citizens and journalists by trade,
making open journalistic debate both possible and popular. This is the
essence of democracy.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Commentary: How insurance firms drive debate

Editor's note: Wendell Potter has served since May 2009 as senior fellow
on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit
organization that says it seeks to expose "corporate spin and government
propaganda." After a 20-year career as a corporate public relations
executive, Potter left his job last year as head of communications for one
of the nation's largest health insurers, CIGNA Corporation.

http://us.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/17/potter.health.insurance/index.html?iref=topnews

"Le photographe George Lessard dénonce les pratiques douteuses du gouvernement des TNO en matière de respect du droit d’auteur."

Arts et culture : Qui veut s'approprier les droits des artistes du Nord?

http://aquilon.nt.ca/Article/Qui-veut-s-approprier-les-droits-des-artistes-du-Nord-200908132229/default.aspx#article

Écrit par Batiste W. Foisy 
Paru le 13 août 2009
0 Commentaire(s)
Le photographe George Lessard en pleine action, lors d'un voyage d'échange en Russie, ce printemps. (Photo: Yudin Andrey Nikolaevich)
Le photographe George Lessard en pleine action, lors d'un voyage d'échange en Russie, ce printemps. (Photo: Yudin Andrey Nikolaevich)

Le photographe George Lessard dénonce les pratiques douteuses du gouvernement des TNO en matière de respect du droit d'auteur.

Le photographe indépendant George Lessard n'a pas l'intention de s'enregistrer sur le répertoire en ligne des artistes des TNO (www.nwtarts.ca). Il n'est pas contre l'idée de diffuser son talent en ligne – loin de là! – mais il trouve que le prix à payer pour être listé sur ce site Web du gouvernement des TNO est plutôt salé.

« Quand vous voulez devenir membre de ce site-là, explique-t-il, on vous demande des images de votre Å“uvre et on demande aussi une licence pour l'utilisation de ces images, de la part du gouvernement des Territoires du Nord-Ouest. Une licence qui les autorise à l'utiliser de n'importe quelle façon que ce soit. Je pense que ce n'est pas juste. Ils devraient plutôt demander une licence restreinte à l'utilisation de l'image sur ce site spécifique. »

Si vous souhaitez vous enregistrer sur ce répertoire, vous devrez remplir et signer un formulaire dont l'une des clauses spécifie que le gouvernement retient les droits de reproduction de l'image cédée « pour tout usage dont notamment, mais non limité à, l'illustration, la publicité, le marketing ou la publication sur tout support électronique ou imprimé ». C'est ce passage qui irrite Lessard, qui relève au passage que le formulaire n'est disponible qu'en anglais. Selon lui, le gouvernement retire le pain de la bouche à ceux qu'il prétend défendre.

« Le gouvernement des TNO dit qu'il veut encourager les artistes, mais dans ce cas-ci, il n'y a pas de possibilité pour les artistes de générer un revenu avec ces images-là », dit-il. Selon lui, le GTNO aiderait davantage les créateurs en leur achetant les droits restreints de reproduction des images qu'en leur demandant de les céder intégralement et sans compensation.

Celui qui est membre du Collectif pour les droits d'auteur du Front des artistes canadiens a écrit au ministre de l'industrie du tourisme et de l'investissement, Bob McLeod, afin de lui faire entendre son mécontentement. Le ministre n'a pas tardé à lui répondre pour lui dire que l'intention n'a jamais été d'usurper les droits d'auteurs des artistes du Nord.

Dans sa lettre, le ministre affirme que seules les reproductions à des fins de promotion et de communications internes des photos soumises sur le site nwtarts.com sont envisagées par le gouvernement. « Cette base de données est un programme promotionnel dont l'adhésion repose sur une base volontaire par les artistes, écrit le ministre. Plus de 200 artistes ont souscrit à ce programme pour être exposé sur le site Web et dans des publications afférentes telles que Artist Newsline, une lettre d'information du GTNO destinée à la communauté artistique des TNO. Ce n'est que ce genre de promotion du travail des artistes qui est envisagée et permise par le formulaire de cessation de droits tel que rédigé. »

Mais George Lessard n'en démord pas. « Quand même, n'importe quel ministère du gouvernement peut faire n'importe quoi avec les images qu'on soumet », dit-il.

D'après lui, les artistes des TNO auraient avantage à mieux connaître les ramifications du droit d'auteur. « J'espère que le ministère de l'Industrie aidera un jour les artistes du Nord à mieux connaître leurs droits, dit-il.C'est important. »

 
---

GEORGE LESSARD
Information, Communications and Media Specialist
451 Norseman Dr.
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
X1A 2J1, Canada

Yellowknife Land Line # (867) 873-2662
Yellowknife Cell # (867) 445-9193
SKYPE: themediamentor

Online Business Card:
http://lessardcard.notlong.com

E-mail: mediamentor@gmail.com

Home Pages: http://mediamentor.ca
My panoramic images
http://panoramas-by-george.notlong.com
My YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mediamentor
Online Activities: http://www.web.ca/~media/index.html
Photos: http://photosbygeorge.notlong.com
Photo Illustrations: http://www.flickr.com/photos/george-lessard/sets/72157603627797568/
Etcetera:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/george-lessard/sets/459582/

My Public Bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/themediamentor

Member:
Canadian Association of Journalists http://www.caj.ca
Canadian Artists Representation / le Front des artistes canadiennes http://www.carfac.ca/
Canadian Artists Representation Copyright Collective http://www.carcc.ca/
Sent from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada

Omeka 1.0 - Serious Web Publishing

Omeka 1.0
http://omeka.org/

If you're looking to start your own online exhibit, you'll want to give
Omeka 1.0 a test run. This web-based publishing platform was created by
staff members at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason
University, and it allows users "to focus on content and interpretation
rather than programming". First-time users may wish to look at some of the
online exhibits that have been created so far with Omeka, and then dive
right in. The site also has complete documentation, along with discussion
forums and an RSS feed. This version of Omeka is compatible with computers
running Linux. [KMG]

Omeka is a free and open source collections based web-based publishing
platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals,
educators, and cultural enthusiasts. Its "five-minute setup" makes
launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Omeka is
designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on
content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0
technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster
user interaction and participation. It makes top-shelf design easy with a
simple and flexible templating system. Its robust open-source developer
and user communities underwrite Omeka's stability and sustainability.

Until now, scholars and cultural heritage professionals looking to publish
collections-based research and online exhibitions required either
extensive technical skills or considerable funding for outside vendors. By
making standards based, serious online publishing easy, Omeka puts the
power and reach of the web in the hands of academics and cultural
professionals themselves.

Top journalists give tips on YouTube

In a pair of recent initiatives, YouTube has taken this effort to raise
its profile even further by reaching out to journalists, both professional
and amateur. The first initiative revolves around the opening of a partner
program to all news organisations already accepted into Google News. The
second involves a new Reporters Center at which professional journalists
give advice to working citizen newsgatherers.

The goal of these initiatives is to gear YouTube toward a more
professional audience, making it a resource for hosting journalistic works
and educating budding news reporters about the best methods for
information gathering.
The question is whether news organisations will accept YouTube as a partner.

[...]

How To: Craft an important story

YouTube's other journalistic initiative is the launch of its new
Reporter's Center, which posts videos and guides from top American
journalists.

Some of the current videos in the new channel include CBS News' Katie
Couric explaining how to conduct a good interview, NPR's Scott Simon on
how to tell a good story and The Associated Press Washington bureau chief
Ron Fournier on how to do "watchdog" journalism.

The videos tend to be short, simple guides in laypman's language about how
to report on the news. The videos are no substitute for actual journalism
school, but they provide helpful hints and tricks on how to do reporting.

The videos also include tutorials about how to prepare captured footage
for use on YouTube and upload it to the site. As for the videos in the
Reporter's Center itself, they originally came from the accounts of the
various organisations and journalists that they are linked to, making the
Center more of a centralised location for this information. What's unique,
according to the initial announcement, is that this Center is not just for
one-way communication, that the reporters involved will be accepting and
responding to comments from the public.

More at
http://www.ejc.net/magazine/article/top_journalists_give_tips_on_youtube/

Firefox Plug-In Frees US Court Records, Threatens Judiciary Profits

Firefox Plug-In Frees Court Records, Threatens Judiciary Profits

Better Access to Public Court Records

RECAP
https://www.recapthelaw.org/
is a free extension for Firefox that improves the experience of using
PACER, the electronic public access system for the U.S. Federal District
and Bankruptcy Courts. It:

* Helps you give back: Contributes to a public archive hosted by the
Internet Archive
* Saves you money: Shows you when free documents are available
* Keeps you organized: Gives you better filenames, enables useful headers

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/firefox-plug-in-frees-court-records-threatens-judiciary-profits/

[excerpt]

Access to the nation's federal law proceedings just got a public interest
hack, thanks to programmers from Princeton, Harvard and the Internet
Archive, who released a Firefox plug-in designed to make millions of pages
of legal documents free.

Free as in beer and free as in speech.

The Problem: Federal courts use an archaic, document-tracking system known
as PACER as their official repository for complaints, court motions, case
scheduling and decisions. The system design resembles a DMV computer
system, circa 1988 — and lacks even the most basic functionality, such as
notifications when a case gets a new filing. But what's worse is that
PACER charges 8 cents per page (capped at $2.40 per doc) and even charges
for searches — an embarrassing limitation on public access to information,
especially when the documents are copyright-free.

The Solution: RECAP https://www.recapthelaw.org/ , a Firefox-only plugin,
that rides along as one usually uses PACER — but it automatically checks
if the document you want is already in its own database. The plug-in's
tagline, 'Turning PACER around,' alludes to the fact that its name comes
from spelling PACER backwards. RECAP's database is being seeded with
millions of bankruptcy and Federal District Court documents, which have
been donated, bought or gotten for free by open-government advocate Carl
Malamud and fellow travelers such as Justia.

China - Life of a Chinese journalist Part 2: My life in prison by Jiang Weiping

RWB - Reporters Without Borders

http://www.rsf.org/Life-of-a-Chinese-journalist-Part.html
08/17/2009

China - Life of a Chinese journalist:

Part 2: My life in prison by Jiang Weiping

Reporters Without Borders is presenting a series of four articles by
Chinese journalist Jiang Weiping recounting his career as an investigative
reporter from the time he started out as a journalist in the 1980s to his
arrest in 2000 and his departure for exile in Canada this year.

"Jiang is a courageous and exemplary journalist who did not think twice
about the dangers he was running when he denounced corruption at the
highest levels in the Communist Party of China," Reporters Without Borders
said. "It is thanks to committed journalism like his that the Chinese
public can learn about the all-powerful party's abuses and press freedom
will be able to evolve in China."

Jiang achieved recognition in the course of his long career, which he
began by working for the state news agency Xinhua. In the early 1990s, he
became northeast China bureau chief for the Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen
Wei Po (&#39321;&#28207;&#25991;&#21295;&#22577;). He wrote a series of
articles on corruption in the party for the Hong Kong-based magazine
Frontline (&#21069;&#21736;). Around this time he also started working for
Hong Kong magazine.

He was arrested in the northeastern province of Dalian in December 2000
and was sentenced in May 2001 to eight years in prison on charges of
endangering state security and divulging state secrets. He was finally
released in 2006 after serving six years of his sentence.

In February 2009, he obtained political asylum in Canada, where he now
lives with his wife in Toronto and continues working as a freelance
journalist and calligraphist.

------------------------

RSF - Reporters sans frontieres

http://www.rsf.org/Vie-d-un-journaliste-chinois.html
17/08/2009

Chine - Vie d'un journaliste chinois:

2ème partie: Ma vie en prison par Jiang Weiping

Reporters sans frontières présente une série de quatre articles du
journaliste d'investigation Jiang Weiping, dans lesquels il raconte sa vie
de journaliste : de ses débuts dans le journalisme dans les années 1980,
en passant par son arrestation en 2000, jusqu'à son exil au Canada en
2009.

« Jiang Weiping est un journaliste exemplaire et courageux. Il n'a pas
hésité à se mettre en danger pour dénoncer la corruption dans les plus
hautes sphères du Pari communiste chinois. C'est grâce à un journalisme
engagé que la population chinoise prend connaissance des dérives du Parti
'tout puissant' et grâce au travail de journalistes engagés tels que Jiang
Weiping que la liberté de la presse pourra évoluer en Chine », a déclaré
l'organisation.

Jiang Weiping est un journaliste expérimenté et reconnu. Il a commencé sa
carrière dans les années 1980, en travaillant pour l'agence Xinhua. Puis,
au début des années 1990, il est devenu chef du bureau de la Chine du
Nord-Est pour le journal hongkongais Wen Wei Po
(&#39321;&#28207;&#25991;&#21295;&#22577;). En 1999, il a écrit une série
d'articles sur la corruption du PCC pour le magazine hongkongais Frontline
(&#21069;&#21736;). A partir de 2001, il a travaillé pour le Hong Kong
magazine.

En décembre 2000, il est arrêté par les autorités provinciales de Dalian
(Nord-Est). En mai 2001, il est condamné à huit ans de prison pour « mise
en danger de la sécurité de l'Etat » et « diffusion de secrets d'Etat ».
Il est finalement libéré en 2006, après avoir purgé six années de prison.

En février 2009, il obtient l'asile politique au Canada. Il vit à Toronto
avec sa femme et continue de travailler en tant que journaliste
indépendant et calligraphe.

Vincent Brossel
Asia-Pacific Desk
Reporters Without Borders
33 1 44 83 84 70
asia@rsf.org

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources are all about sharing.

In a brave new world of learning, OER content is made free to use or
share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through
licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know.

Browse and search OER Commons to find curriculum, and tag, rate, and
review it for others.

http://www.oercommons.org/


Subject Areas
Arts (1637)
Business (678)
Humanities (4482)
Mathematics & Statistics (2873)
Science & Technology (13122)
Social Sciences (5035)

Grade Levels
Primary (5399)
Secondary (8075)
Post-secondary (16186)

Sunday, August 16, 2009

The Last Messages Club

The Last Message Process Explained

What it can do
The Last Messages Club is a secure place for you to write and store
messages to be sent after you die.

What it can't do
The Last Messages Club cannot replace a properly drawn-up will. Documents
that you store with the Last Message Club have no legal authority.

What are the alternatives?
You could ask a lawyer to store these documents with your will or leave
them with a friend but neither of these options are really suitable. A
lawyer will normally only store documents with a Last Will and Testament
for a client they know very well and, even then, it will be inconvenient
and probably quite expensive to add, amend or delete your messages. If you
leave documents with a friend, there is always a risk that they will be
read (either deliberately or by accident) during your life. And after you
die they may simply be forgotten.

You can use The Last Messages Club to:
Let your family know where to find details of important documents, like
life insurance policies and bank account details.
Make life easier for those you leave behind.
Explain the reasons why you have divided your estate in the way you have
& the thinking behind your will.
Manage your on-line life with a digital will
Give somebody the passwords to your online accounts so that they can
close them down.

http://www.lastmessagesclub.co.uk/

Friday, August 14, 2009

Socialnomics Summary

Video compilation of Erik Qualman explaining his theory of Socialnomics(TM) along side relevant social media statistics. The book Socialnomics from Wiley Publishing will be in stores August 31, 2009... mind you... Erik has the personal appeal of a dork.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Resolution (The Torture Song)

A brand new, powerful music video from David Ippolito. (That Guitar Man from Central Park) Watch this video. Please leave your own comments. Be heard. Download this song for free at thatguitarman.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

George Lessard celebrates a personal photographic milestone

GEORGE LESSARD 
is very pleased to announce
that his images on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/george-lessard/
have, as of
August 1st, 2009,
been seen

over 100,000 times.

Apologies for duplicate posts

---

GEORGE LESSARD
Information, Communications and Media Specialist
451 Norseman Dr.
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
X1A 2J1, Canada

Yellowknife Land Line # (867) 873-2662
Yellowknife Cell # (867) 445-9193
SKYPE: themediamentor

Online Business Card:
http://lessardcard.notlong.com

E-mail: mediamentor@gmail.com

Home Pages: http://mediamentor.ca
My panoramic images
http://panoramas-by-george.notlong.com
My YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mediamentor
Online Activities: http://www.web.ca/~media/index.html
Photos: http://photosbygeorge.notlong.com
Photo Illustrations: http://www.flickr.com/photos/george-lessard/sets/72157603627797568/
Etcetera:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/george-lessard/sets/459582/

My Public Bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/themediamentor

Member:
Canadian Association of Journalists http://www.caj.ca
Canadian Artists Representation / le Front des artistes canadiennes http://www.carfac.ca/
Canadian Artists Representation Copyright Collective http://www.carcc.ca/

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Good Time Delta Band # 02

The Old Time Dance - Jig 'Till You Can't Jig No More... with James Rogers and the Good Time Delta Band, Monday July 13, 2009 at the Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik Northwest Territories, Canada
For more on GNAF, please visit their website at http://www.gnaf.org/

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Crack Spider's Bitch

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Grea Northern Arts Festival


GNAF_2009
Originally uploaded by The MediaMentor
Canadian North Great Northern Arts Festival

I will be in Inuvik from July 10th to 19th.... and will present the following workshop....

Introduction to Digital Imagery and the Internet with George Lessard (Yellowknife)
Saturday July 18 1:00PM


This 4-hour workshop is designed to introduce participants to digital photography and the use of digital photographs to increase their income and protect their intellectual property rights. Participants will learn how to choose the right digital camera to buy; basic photography skills; and how to show your work online for little or no money. In the end you will have the tools to be able to buy the right camera at the right price that will be a good investment and meet the your needs; understand how to edit images for use on the internet or for print use; and how to have a presence on the internet that you can maintain yourself. $65
Visit George's website at http://mediamentor.ca

Watch for daily posting of images on my Flicker site

and videos on my YouTuble page

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Canadain Newspaper "Letters" E-mail Addresses



AB Calgary Herald <letters@theherald.canwest.com>,



        AB Calgary Sun
<callet@calgarysun.com>,



        AB Edmonton
Sun <mailbag@edmsun.com>,



        AB Edmonton
Journal <letters@thejournal.canwest.com>,



        AB Grande
Prairie Herald-Tribune <letters@bowesnet.com>,



        AB Red-Deer
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Monday, April 20, 2009

Yellowknife Social Plan Discussion Paper




For Discussion



City
of Yellowknife Social Plan







What is the
Social Plan?



The
goal of the social plan is to enhance the welfare of Yellowknife
citizens. The social plan will define the City of Yellowknife’s
role in responding to social issues. The plan will:




  • Summarize
    key social issues and conditions.



  • Inventory
    services and programs by government and non-government agency
    responsibility.



  • Evaluate
    service gaps and concerns.



  • Recommend
    a process to build consensus for coordinated action to address gaps
    in social services and concerns.








At
minimum, the plan will consider:



-crime
and public safety -homelessness -substance abuse



-children
and youth -seniors -ethnic diversity



-process
-public education -organizational capacity



-access
to social programs/services







In
January, the City of Yellowknife contracted with Lutra Associates
Ltd., of Yellowknife, and the Social Planning and Research
Council of British Columbia to prepare the social plan.







Not Just Roads
and Sewers!



The
City of Yellowknife acknowledges that it has a responsibility for the
well-being of Yellowknifers. The City’s responsibility extends
beyond traditional services like safe water, sewage treatment, roads,
and recreation. City Hall already coordinates Yellowknife’s
Homelessness Coalition and distributes grants to community
organizations. Up until now, it has not had a social plan for
furthering community well-being.







What
role do you think the City can play to address social issues?







A
Preliminary Scan of Yellowknife’s Social
Issues.



Yellowknife
has significant housing concerns.




  • The
    Yellowknife Homelessness Coalition has made progress on transitional
    housing for adult men but there is a lack of emergency and
    transitional housing for women and youth.



  • Suitable,
    affordable housing challenges many city residents but the
    City is working on an Affordable Housing Strategy.








The
average personal income in Yellowknife is higher than the
Canadian average but,




  • The
    income disparities between the ‘have’ and ‘have
    nots’ are striking and food security and nutritional health
    are growing concerns.








Substance
abuse/addictions
and the illegal drug trade
are related to other social problems.




  • The
    Yellowknife Wellness Coalition is tackling these issues. More active
    community policing and prevention programs
    help to curtail the drug trade and other criminal activity but these
    efforts need to be intensified and sustained. Treatment facilities
    and a day-time drop-in center for people on the street would also
    help.








Yellowknife