Last January I wrote :

“How do you get your local news? I ask because I live 15 miles from the Great Salt Lake. That’s not very far, especially by the standards of the American west, yet I learned about choleric birds living, flying, and dying around the lake in the New York Times by way of Daylife. At first I was shocked more by the fact that I didn’t know about this local story…So when it comes to local news, what’s your primary source: television, newspaper, online, or other?”

Today we can flesh out that “other” category a bit, from CrunchGear:

“It’s like a newspaper in your phone. I like the idea of location-targeted news from the Associated Press coming straight to my iPhone (and probably iPod Touch); it’s like the local page from your newspaper, but without the cow-tipping updates.”

(Daylife links added)

AP writer Seth Sutel explains:

“Companies that help connect advertisers with networks of Web sites will be among the sellers of ads for the new service and will share revenues with the news providers. The service will deliver local news from participating member newspapers and national and international news from AP. The reports will be organized by ZIP code. Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and others also offer news services tailored for mobile devices, but Jeffrey Litvack, global product development director for AP, said the Mobile News Network would offer easier access to local news stories.”

I’m hoping a few of our loyal readers chime in here with thoughts and opinions. Is this plan enticing?

We’ve highlighted this a few times now. The 2008 U.S. primary election is providing both a showcase of how similar news can vary by source and how confusing the US primary process is. For comparison, here’s version three, version two, and version one. And now to the great kerfuffle:

The New York Times’ Election Guide 2008 has the following delegate count:

Barack Obama: 1732
Hillary Clinton: 1595

Obama: 1734
Clinton: 1597

Obama: 1724
Clinton: 1593

“To help its readers save time, The New York Times Co. is implementing new technology that enables its Web site users to control the news and information they view. To boost its communication channels with the outside world, Sun Microsystems Inc. lets its employees maintain Web journals, called blogs, that are open to public view on the company’s Web site. Both companies are at the forefront of what some experts say is an emerging technology field that all businesses will need to understand in coming years.” July 16, 2004 article from the East Bay Business Times

Universal McCann’s latest research (i.e., March 2008) on the impact of social media shows a few clear trends. Some are obvious and all are interesting:

1. Individual users are producing content (with an ongoing shift towards participation)
2. Video clips and podcasts are leading the next charge of on-demand media (with video clips the fastest growing platform)
3. A majority of participants in the study joined a social network (17,000 users in 19 countries were surveyed)
4. “The widget economy is real.” (Dive on in!)
5. Collectively blogs rival traditional media (thus making the blogosphere part of the mainstream media)
6. Surprise: China has the largest blogging community in the world (more than the US and Western Europe combined)

The report also offers a definition of social media:

“Social media is an important shift, as it summarizes the importance of interaction, the consumer, and the community. The term emphasizes the idea that as a collective it can have as much impact as any traditional media platform. In truth, to claim social media as ‘new’ is slightly misleading. From the beginning, the internet was founded on message boards, chat rooms, and peer to peer communication. What has changed is the mass involvement that modern social platforms inspire” (emphasis added).

The blogosphere is alive with posts about this report. ReadWriteWeb stated “…with China having 42m bloggers compared to the US’s 26m, there is large scope for social media to flourish there - even despite China’s political issues with social media,” and Digital Information added “despite the popularity of Facebook and MySpace, other countries dwarf the U.S. in joining social networks.”

You can view the full report here, but be warned, it is a 26MB PDF file and while we always encourage our users to check primary source material, you may be better off browsing McCann’s site for the basic facts and figures, or simply trying the Daylife search “Universial McCann” AND social media. Size and content aside, the report itself is a beautifully designed document.

First a few Daylife quotes by and about Candace Parker:

“I don’t feel I am changing the game. Candace Parker is dunking, and I’m just using my ability like she is. I look up to her. ” — Brittney Griner

“I feel like in the WNBA it’s going to be the rivalries. It’s going to be the Candice Wiggins vs. Candace Parker. It’s going to be the Sylvia Fowles vs. Erlana Larkins. I feel like it’s going to be great for the game.” — Candace Parker

Now to the Candace Parker photos:

         
         

And, finally, follow her path through the news with the Candace Parker Daylife topic page.

“We think the government is not happy with a story The Independent published in a recent issue exposing atrocities committed by government forces during the war.” — Bob Kasango, legal counsel for The Independent

From Reuters:

“Ugandan security forces on Saturday raided the offices of a magazine seen as critical of President Yoweri Museveni’s government, arresting three journalists [including managing editor Andrew Mwenda] and taking computers.”

From Mwenda himself, as reported in the Independent:

“There were not witnesses around…I realised the state wanted me to disappear without a trace, so I opened the car window and shouted at people along the road that ‘I was Andrew Mwenda being kidnapped by CMI.’ At this point, the security operatives pulled me back and this time handcuffed me so that I did not cause more trouble….As we drove towards [an] airstrip, I saw a waiting military helicopter which had just landed there and I was thinking whether [President Yoweri] Museveni himself had ordered to see me but wanted me to arrive to him with intimidation. There were many PGB soldiers guarding the place. The other alternative I thought the helicopter was maybe intended to take me to Gulu and kill me from there.”

Three weeks ago Andrew Mwenda, his office, and colleagues were subjected to a similar raid. We can keep an eye on the Andrew Mwenda page to see how this unfolds. Also check out our “Press Freedom” tag for similar posts, including one which argues, in small part, freedom of the press is not always a good thing.

In a related story, today the New York Times chronicled the ordeal of Barry Bearak, a reporter in Zimbabwe. The report is written by Bearak himself and includes many gems, such as:

“I was being charged with the crime of ‘committing journalism.’ One of my captors, Detective Inspector Dani Rangwani, described the offense to me as something despicable, almost hissing the words: ‘You’ve been gathering, processing and disseminating the news.’” — Bearak

Give it a try: The Zoological Park in New Delhi. This query works best without quotes because we get a broader range of compelling news articles and a slick photo collection of hippos, tigers, pelicans, crows, and more.

 

Here’s a 3-minute demonstration, created by a friend of Daylife, teaching us how to easily put Daylife widgets to work on your blog or website.

Thanks Brandon!

“Starting Monday, the effects of the stimulus will begin to reach millions of households across our country…This money is going to help Americans offset the high prices we’re seeing at the gas pump, at the grocery store, and will also give our economy a boost to help us pull out of this economic slowdown…” — George W. Bush

With the first rebate checks due to be mailed on Monday, read more news about the economic stimulus, or follow topic pages for Ben Bernanke and George W. Bush, or keep an eye on the stock market.

Josh Catone, while contemplating the finale of the Web 2.0 Expo, was forced to the conclusion “there is no web 3.0, there is no web 2.0 - there is just the web.”

While that’s true, there is just the web, it’s a bit like saying there are no humans, there are no primates, there are only fish-like invertebrates.

With all due respect to Catone, I’d like to take a minute to offer a contrary perspective.

Web or Web 1.0:
User wins a shopping spree able to take home all he or she can put in her basket in 60 minutes. He or she can shop at 15 stores. During the contest, the contestant madly runs around grabbing things, nearly randomly, off shelves. The contestant may or may not leave the first store. After 60 minutes, he or she has 294 items in her cart, 85% of these items are later given to charity.

Web 2.0:
User wins a shopping spree, only this time the user gives a list of a few things he or she really needs to a fast runner, a list of things he or she would really enjoy, but doesn’t fully need, to an endurance athlete, and a list of things that he or she already owns to a rocket scientist (this rocket scientist also a weekend warrior-type athlete). It’s the same 15 stores, but the contestant sits in Brookstone on a vibrating massage chair for the 60 minutes while the sprinter, marathoner, and rocket scientist do the shopping for him or her. After 60 minutes, the contestant has three carts, each filled with 400 items, 25% of which he or she later sells on eBay, 10% he or she gives away free on Craigslist, and another 10% she gives away via her Facebook and MySpace profiles. The contestant tried to sell stuff on her blog, but it didn’t work out.

Web 3.0:
A female user (because I’m tired of writing “he or she”) wins a shopping spree as outlined above. She sits in a vibrating massage chair on a beach. The 15 stores are now just one store. Her shoppers are now all enduro-sprinto-scientists on performance-enhancing drugs, each with the ability to both read her mind and teleport themselves and individual objects directly to her. She sips martinis in Maui, worried about the shopping spree and how it will affect the profits of the store, which she built herself, using parts from the original 15 stores. After 60 minutes she has fewer products in her carts than the previous contestant, but she keeps them all.

What do you think?

“This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species’ history…” — Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence

“Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.” — Wells

“Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction?” — Meave Leakey, Paleontologist

More articles circling around mankind’s close call with extinction here.

What’s the recipe for taking your website across foreign language markets successfully? Josh Lowenstein, blogging from the Web 2.0 Expo, writes:

“Jimmy Kim from Nexon…noted that Google has just a 5 percent take in Korea’s search engine market, while other flashy services get more clicks because of updated looks. Kim compared it to two competing gas stations on opposite corners of the street with gas that’s the same price. Kim says the one with more “bling” gets the extra customers–and it works the same way for Web apps that attempt to get into the Korean market. Localization’s not as easy as changing the language, though. Kelly Goto of Gotomedia noted that every culture uses the Web in a different way, and sometimes you need to fine tune a site to make it match whoever’s viewing it. Sites like Facebook who are just now beginning to expand on foreign language support and conversion have begun to tweak small items by having users do some of the legwork to translate–making sure your motto isn’t accidentally insulting the mothers of your users.”

Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis blogged about taking information out in the world and piecing it back together. While Jarvis was not specifically writing about web applications translating across cultures, he was writing about finding what’s bubbling up in the world and at least recognizing the signal from the noise. Jarvis noted the “next challenge, of course, is to figure out who’s legit. But first things first. We have to get our antennae up.”

If you combine Jarvis telling users (us) to get our antennae up, with Kelly Goto noting above “sometimes you need to fine tune a site to make it match whoever’s viewing it,” there’s an obvious case where users and developers can thrive together. With users and developers on the lookout for the fine-grained details, and developers ready to incorporate such details, everyone wins. The local users get what they want, which is an application geared to them. The applications get what they want — namely, the local users.

Is this view idealistic, realistic, optimistic, or just cryptic?

Please discuss.

BuzzLogic is BlogRovr’s new owner. On the surface, it’s just another established company snatching up a startup, but scratch the surface, as Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web did, and some interesting questions arise.

A few of Kirkpatrick’s questions:

1. “Before you sell my data, even in anonymized aggregate, to a PR and ad sales firm - should I be able to export my [data]? Is that my data? Is it BlogRovr’s to sell without concern for my access to it?”
2. “If I use your tool and you use my data - who’s property is the end product?”
3. “Is clickstream data a user’s own responsibility?”

I see at least one non-web analogy here which could help frame the discussion. Student research leads to a product created while the student is enrolled in a university. The student in an appropriate analog would be using the tools provided by the institution. Whose product is it? Does it belong to the student or the university? Or the student’s professor?

Recently we blogged about the center of your social map and asked “are you at the center of your world?” If you see yourself at the center of your social map, creating, shaping, and culling the content you’re interested in (and allowing this content to find you), these questions may require some exploration on your part. Fortunately, Kirkpatrick does much of the exploring for us.

He ends by stating “BlogRovr and BuzzLogic deserve congratulations at least for recognizing the value of user data in the blogosphere. How should the rest of us feel about the news, though?”

So, what’s your take?

 In this case, it’s 3000 words portraying Tibetan exiles protesting against China, and
 1000 words rallying for a unified China.

  
  

 These stories are surfacing on many topic pages including both the Dalai Lama and the United Nations.

“[E]ach of us needs to think of ourselves as the center of our respective social map universes. In other words, the social map — in order for it to be considered a map – needs to systematically connect the dots between me, my content and my network. A map-lication of sorts.”

That’s from Mark Sigal (blog), writing at GigaOm. When “You” won Time’s Person of the Year a few years ago, maybe they got it wrong. It wasn’t you, it was me - the subtle perspective difference having at the time looming implications. Back then (2006-ish) maybe we were using Facebook and MySpace to find friends or to find music. I may have went looking for you.

Now, these same things are finding us. We’re the center, and not “we” collectively.

Loyal readers of this blog understand my passion for baseball, particularly the Red Sox, so I dedicate part of my RSS reader to baseball news. The content I want finds me. My narcissism shows up as well. The Daylife blog is in my RSS Reader (right alongside BuzzMachine, GigaOm, Webware, TechCrunch, LiveScience, and many, many others). My iGoogle page lets me know if I need an umbrella or sunscreen, it gives me my latest email, and a portal into both Wikipedia and Dictionary.com. In My Daylife World, I’m tracking approximately 50 topics, five news publications, and storing a vast supply of images.

Sigal goes on to write:

“That regardless of where my content and data originate, I have a right to pull this data into MY sandbox, a sandbox where I track my threads, organize my media, filter my views and push my content wherever and however I please. While this position seems to raise a virtual middle finger to almost every service provider’s terms of service, it should not be viewed as heretical.”

Are you at the center of your world?

See them all on Robert Mugabe’s topic page.

“Zimbabwe is marking its independence day with President Robert Mugabe due to make his first major speech since the disputed elections three weeks ago. Mugabe is to address a rally in Harare to mark 28 years since independence from Britain and the end of white minority rule.” — Deutsche Welle

“The 300,000-strong South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) says it will not unload the weapons because they fear Robert Mugabe will use them to crack down on election opponents.” — Sky News

“Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe bitterly attacked former colonial ruler Britain today in his first major speech since disputed elections, saying London was paying the population to turn against him.” — SABC News

“‘Down with the British,’ Mr. Mugabe said before 15,000 people at a stadium in a suburb of Harare, the capital, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported. ‘Down with thieves who want to steal our country.’” — New York Times

“The 84-year-old [Mugabe] played a key role in the 1970s war of independence and took power as Zimbabwe’s first prime minister in 1980 on a wave of popular support.” — BBC News

“President Robert Mugabe belittled his political opponents as puppets of Britain, saying during independence celebrations Friday that the former colonial ruler wants Zimbabwe back.” — USA Today

“The Opposition says it defeated Mr Mugabe in elections held almost three weeks ago but Mr Mugabe has refused to release the official results.” — ABC News