Texas Attorney General Investigating Google & Antitrust Issues -
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an investigation into Google’s business practices as they relate to search listings, in particular whether Google is manipulating its paid and editorial results in a way that violates antitrust laws.
We received a tip about the investigation this week, and Google confirmed today that an investigation started in July. The company plans to post to its blog later today about the matter.
» via SearchEngineLand
In wake of North Carolina investigation, ACC schools reevaluate social media policies for athletes -
In the past four months, the social media usage by players on the North Carolina football team played a significant role in embroiling the Tar Heels program in an NCAA investigation that may leave the team without many key contributors for at least Saturday night’s season opener.
Subsequently, one-third of the ACC schools that previously did not have official social media usage policies in place have begun work to initiate them. While all 12 ACC athletic programs said they have warned student-athletes about the risks of using Twitter, Facebook and MySpace for the past few years, recent examples of the potential perils of such mediums have led several schools to make a more thorough examination of their guidelines.
» via The Washington Post
YouTube Deal Turns Copyright Videos Into Revenue -
In the past, Lions Gate, which owns the rights to the “Mad Men” clip, might have requested that TomR35’s version be taken down. But it has decided to leave clips like this up, and in return, YouTube runs ads with the video and splits the revenue with Lions Gate.
Remarkably, more than one-third of the two billion views of YouTube videos with ads each week are like TomR35’s “Mad Men” clip — uploaded without the copyright owner’s permission but left up by the owner’s choice. They are automatically recognized by YouTube, using a system called Content ID that scans videos and compares them to material provided by copyright owners.
» via The New York Times
“If we are ever going to meet the scholarly and public challenges we face, we may want to abandon disciplines. How else will scholars learn to think beyond old boundaries?” — Abandoning Disciplines - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Google Announces Wave In A Box -
Google Wave is far from dead, and developers, early adopters and enterprises will be glad to hear it. Today Google announced it will expand on the code it has already open sourced, building Wave into a functional application that will allow users to run wave servers, host their own waves and build bigger and better applications with the real-time collaboration technology.
“Since the beginning, it has been our vision that the Google Wave protocols could support a new generation of communication and collaboration tools,” engineer Alex North wrote on the Google Wave developer blog.
» via ReadWriteWeb
When it comes to saving money on textbooks, students can help themselves by renting their books or buying them used. Professors can help students by only upgrading to new editions when they have to. Federal regulators can help both groups make well-informed choices by requiring textbook publishers to give their customers the information they need to be frugal. But what can the colleges themselves do?
Daytona State College thinks it has the answer: eliminate the used-book and rental markets on campus and have all students buy e-books.
By doing so, the college could save its students as much as 80 percent on course materials, says Rand S. Spiwak, its chief financial officer.
» via Inside Higher Ed
“In a world where people read on electronic devices, books may become mash-ups of media, including music, video, and possibly advertising. (Advertising in ebooks is of particular concern if we distribute them for “free” or nearly free.) An electronic, interactive Alice in Wonderland is an incredible thing, and I’m intrigued by the possibilities of the technology. But the electronic Alice may be closer to a video game than to Lewis Carroll’s original. So perhaps I simply have a problem with the vocabulary: can something that is not bound, not made of paper, and not necessarily meant to be read –– can that thing still be called a book?” — Bound Books vs. Ebooks, That is Still the Question
Everywhere, libraries are collapsing under their own weight, though this isn’t a matter of a tight budget restricting libraries from expensive information machines. Most libraries have all but done away with costly microfilm and microfiche readers and replaced them with inexpensive scanning and digital retrieval technology. Accessible technology has made it easier for a library to keep itself abreast of modern methods of information delivery. The issue with this universal accessibility to information is that this material is now available to the average library patron via their broadband Internet connections at home. There’s less and less reason to maintain a public building which functions as a locus of information when these things can be done from a Starbucks or a bedroom. As technology progresses, librarians are reduced from purveyors of organized information to glorified video store clerks. That is, for anyone who doesn’t already have Netflix.
» via Splice Today
Has Rupert Murdoch's paywall gamble paid off? -
Two months after Rupert Murdoch’s decision to erect a subscription paywall around the websites of The Times and The Sunday Times, thus removing their content from search engines, the bold experiment is having a marked effect on the rest of British media. There are many who still wish the 79-year-old mogul well, hopeful that he is at the vanguard of a cultural shift that will save newspapers. Yet elsewhere there is dismay among analysts, advertisers, publicists and even some reporters on the papers.
Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, “We are just not advertising on it. If there’s no traffic on there, there’s no point in advertising on there.” Lynam says he has been told by News International insiders that traffic to The Times site has fallen by 90 per cent since the introduction of charges. “That was the same forecast they were giving us prior to registration and the paywall going up, so whether it’s a reflection on reality or not, I don’t know.”
» via The Independent
Tomorrow’s cover today: The internet’s openness is uner threat. But the crisis can still be averted.
Gen Y women outearning their peers -
For decades, women have been trying to close the wage gap with men, who still earn more than their female peers with the same level of education. But one group — young, single women with no children — has closed that gap and is pulling ahead of their male counterparts.
An analysis of census data by consumer research firm Reach Advisors found that women between the ages of 22 and 30, without children, had bigger paychecks in 2008 than their male peers in 47 of the 50 largest U.S. cities. Their wages were 8 percent higher, on average, but varied considerably from one city to the next.
» via MSNBC
Explaining the Rise of Cable Commentary and the Demise of TV Journalism -
As he notes, the rise of cable TV in the early 1980s meant that a channel or programmer no longer had to capture an audience of 20 million to earn a profit. Instead, niche programming appealing to audiences as small as 1 million could still generate revenue. This model allows a network such as Fox or MSNBC to adhere to one ideological segment of viewers over another, creating the incentive to brand themselves in terms of ideology rather than news. The 24 hour news cycle, the need to limit costs, and the need to arouse emotion to keep audiences locked in, also led to cable networks preferring a talk and commentary format over hard news (which requires teams of reporters, bureaus, and in Wolf’s terms tends to be too earnest and bland.)
Hamilton, his book written before the widespread emergence of blogs, notes also the influence of the Internet on cable news. In particular—and especially in today’s world of blog dominance—the internet shapes mainstream news organizations by putting a premium on commentary while also promoting the spread of misinformation, rumors, and falsehoods, now a staple of programming at both Fox and MSNBC.
» via Big Think
F.C.C. Considers Rules for Wireless Internet Traffic -
Federal communications regulators said Wednesday that they were considering whether wireless devices should be subject to different Internet traffic rules than telephone and cable lines, in a potential victory for carriers.
At issue is net neutrality, a term that means high-speed Internet providers should not block or slow information, or make Web sites pay to reach users more quickly.
» via The New York Times
Why is everyone always writing off Netflix? -
What is it about Netflix that causes critics to misread it so badly? Call it the innovator’s paradox: Netflix forged an identity by building a simple business—DVD delivery by mail—that had never been done before. The very fact that this DVD-by-mail idea connected so deeply with consumers led many observers to think that was all that Netflix could or would ever do. Instead, the DVD delivery service—while still vital to Netflix’s revenue—looks more like the Trojan horse of a much wider strategy designed to change how Americans watch filmed entertainment.
The company’s critics have also tended to focus on technological platforms, rather than what consumers actually want. Netflix, like Amazon, has built its relationship with customers extremely carefully and successfully—some 15 million people now send Netflix money every month. (How many nonutility companies can boast that?) As long as it continues to keep its customers happy, it should be able to transfer them to whatever platform—DVDs by mail, streaming over the Xbox or Wii or set-top boxes, the iPad, the iPhone—those customers want.
» via Slate
Chrome August’s big winner as Internet Explorer resumes slide
Between July and August, Internet Explorer dropped 0.34 percent, a drop smaller than June’s or July’s gain. Firefox, meanwhile, went up 0.02 percent, Chrome gained 0.36 percent, Safari was up 0.07, and Opera dipped 0.08 percent.
IE looks stuck around the 60 percent mark for the time being. At least it’s still above its lowest point (59.69 percent) with its best chance of market share gains in the short term coming with the IE9 beta, and the back-to-school season.
» via ars technica