|
NEWS FEATURES
No one knows more about us—our ailments, significant others, favorite music, what we're thinking about buying, and how much we spend—than our search engines. However, this is stuff we probably wouldn't choose to share with a multimillion dollar web company. Every major search engine in the world, however, retains every search query ever typed into its field, and privacy advocates are calling for search engines to change their ways.
In the next iteration of the protracted battle between the recording industry and online music networks, both MySpace and Facebook have agreed to remove the popular Project Playlist widget from their sites. Succumbing to pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which claims copyright infringement, the sites issued takedowns in mid-December 2008.
Elsevier, a global healthcare and scientific publisher, announced the four finalists chosen in the first Elsevier Grand Challenge on Jan. 6. The competition invited researchers to prototype tools dealing with the ever-increasing amount of online life sciences information. With cash prizes of $35,000 for first place and $15,000 for second, the winners have quite a bit at stake. Finalists will move on to present their solutions for the judges via webinar at the Experimental Biology conference in April.
Gone are the days of handwritten grocery lists and family calendars hanging on the fridge. Moms today have gone high-tech. From cell phones to blogs, more and more mothers are using technology to organize their busy lives. According to Maria T. Bailey, author of Mom 3.0: Marketing with Today's Mothers by Leveraging New Media & Technology and CEO of BSM Media, in 2009, moms will continue to leverage growing technologies and combine multiple high-tech devices to simplify their daily schedules.
FEATURED STORIES
From sloppy reporting to outright libel, not to mention web-speed requirements and confusing advertising placement. Journalism faces a slow of new challenges online. Can the old rules of media be applied? And if not, what is to become of journalistic ethics online?
As technical and cost barriers fall and security issues are addressed, the cloud has become a viable platform not only for back-end operations but also for key business practices, including content management and distribution.
Open source software always seems attractive because of the absence of license fees. However, as we'll see, not all open source tools are free of cost, and, at the end of the day, you may actually spend more money going the open source route.
COLUMNS
My husband often jokes that he married me for the gadgets. When we first met, this certainly wasn't the case—I was a literary scout, and my booty consisted of manuscripts of forthcoming books (exciting stuff only to those of us eternally on the lookout for a great read). Not long afterward, however, he did fall in love with me (or my job) all over again: I joined the team at EMedia magazine, where we reviewed exciting emerging technologies, such as CD and DVD burners; and a variety of related technologies, such as different types of surround sound.
As the eyes of old print, radio, and TV media turn to the internet for a bridge to take them across the current media business abyss, one troubling fact is becoming abundantly clear: The "real money" isn't there yet. Top executives at TV networks, magazine companies, and even newspapers have known for a while that on-air minutes and print pages sell at much higher rates and produce more revenue in most cases than even the most ambitious digital models.
Mergers and acquisitions are all too common, as are company reorganizations. SharePoint is an increasingly popular repository option. The increasingly common end result: More and more enterprises have important content in at least two incompatible content management systems, and most users cannot access all the systems. Even if you know what's on the "other" system, getting there is usually a hassle.
They're at it again—the doom-criers who assert that reading is disappearing—or at least the right kind of reading. Digital content? Sorry; that's not really reading. In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) produced "Reading at Risk," a report asserting that reading was declining. The report stated reading itself was at risk and projected that "literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a centuy."
Recently, I was checking out a bunch of people on Twitter who began to follow my updates (I'm @dmscott). When I went to @AFPAA, I was surprised to see the Twitter ID belonged to the U.S. Air Force. I sent a DM (direct message) to find out what @AFPAA was doing and received an immediate answer Capt. David Faggard, chief of emerging technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency.
Imagine for a moment that your company has built a factory and filled it with machinery. Or perhaps your company has built a large, new office building with a sizeable parking lot and a good cafeteria. These additions represent considerable investment. Now, imagine that they have forgotten where they built the factory and where the office is located. Beyond imagination, you say. No company would be that incompetent.
|
|
FACES OF ECONTENT
"Provide the best access to the huge variety of online resources."
PRODUCT REVIEWS
Applications abound that create 3D models of objects, buildings, and virtual worlds. Online and off, users want to interact with objects and information in a more natural way, moving through data as if it were presented in a physical, dimensional space. The SpacePilot makes navigating 3D programs and virtual spaces as easy—and almost as natural—as a walk in the park.
CASE STUDIES
When Speakaboos began work on a website of storybook videos for "children and their caregivers to enjoy together," research into available commerce solutions revealed that most traditional payment gateways charge costly transaction fees that would undermine the pay per download business model the company envisioned.
|