Author Archive
Microsoft brings competition

Just as Apple gets ready to launch its new operating system, Windows comes out with a new one too. The competition is high but which computer will users prefer? I think they are totally different and it depends on how user friendly they are.

Windows x64 Operating System.

After years of delays, Microsoft Corp. on Monday started selling new flavors of the Windows operating system that can address vastly more memory than previous versions yet can still run software designed for older computers.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions operate on systems running 64-bit microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corp. The new software costs the same as their 32-bit counterparts.

Apple’s “Tiger” to debut in days…

Apple just keeps developing new programs, devices and systems. The latest, Tiger, will make its mark starting in a just a few days.

In a column about the Longhorn vs. Tiger OS battle, Newsweek’s Steven Levy says that this week’s launch of Mac OS X Tiger will finally bring some “necessary and really cool” features to the desktop, while Windows users will have to wait (atleast) until Christmas 2006. “Apple’s [OS] is here now, and Jobs sees it as indicative of Apple’s agility and drive. ‘Microsoft has followed our taillights for a long time,’ [Jobs] says. ‘Maybe [in the '90s] we stopped innovating for a while, but now they’ve been copying OS X the same way they copied Mac.’

What will they think of next?

IBM May Restructure After Missing Outlook

International Business Machines Corp., the world’s top provider of computer hardware, is weighing a “sizable restructuring” after it surprised investors Thursday with a first-quarter profit that missed Wall Street estimates by 5 cents a share.

The company said results were hurt by difficulty closing transactions, increased pension expenses and a drop in sales in Western Europe and Japan.

I think this came as a shock to a lot of peope, but I am sure they will find their way back to the top!

“Tiger” Server to debut April 29

will also ship on Friday, April 29. The next major release of Apple’s award-winning, UNIX-based server operating system, Tiger Server integrates 100+ leading open source projects and standards-based software applications and more than 200 new features including native support for 64-bit applications, ideal for high performance computing; iChat Server to deploy secure instant messaging within an organization; Weblog Server to publish and share weblogs (blogs); and Xgrid to turn a group of Macs into a virtual supercomputer.

MCI’s top shareholder scores big

MCI is racing to the top.

Carlos Slim Helu is slick.

The Mexican telecommunications magnate, who is the largest shareholder in MCI, has managed to sell his minority stake in the company to Verizon for a price that’s 11 percent above what Verizon plans to pay the rest of the company’s shareholders.

And while everyone else will take their money mostly in stock, Slim will walk away with cash. Verizon also threw in another little perk. In one year, it will give Slim an adjustment based on appreciation of its stock price. In the end the price tag could exceed $27 per share, well above the $23.50 per share being offered to other MCI stockholders.

Weblogs and Journalism Need Each Other

The transparency of blogging has contributed to news organizations becoming more accessible and interactive.

Suggest to an old-school journalist that Weblogs have anything to do with journalism and you’ll be met with howls of derision. Amateur bloggers typically have no editorial oversight, no training in the craft, and no respect for the news media’s rules and standards. Does the free-for-all renegade publishing form known as blogging really have anything to do with journalism?

Read more…

International Symposium on Online Journalism

This is an interesting site. Apparently they have meetings with journalists from all over the world. I think the information on online journalism is quite interesting.

The 6th International Symposium on Online Journalism was held April 8-9, 2005 at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Materials from the event will be posted on this website. Come back soon as video of all the sessions will be posted in their entirety. Real-time news coverage of the two-day event is now available below in our news index. Presentations that were made during the symposium have also been posted. Presentations are presented in the order in which they appeared in the program. Research papers from the Saturday sessions are now available on the site in PDF format. Come back to the site often as more information about the symposium will be posted.

Social networks underused by news sites

Social networks and the news: what could that be?

Well, newspapers could begin by opening their stories and analysis to reader comments, right under the story instead of solely on the letters page. They could invite readers to periodically pose questions to journalists directly about how stories get written; politicians, celebrities or newsmakers could respond to reader questions; editors could explain news priorities.

Readers could rate stories, pictures, videos and reader comments, and they could get alerts when particular readers make comments or when particular news items come up for discussion. Readers could make suggestions about stories they believe need coverage. Newspaper discussion groups could chat about movies, automobiles or sports with staff and wire copy providing the fodder.

Darknet

Darknet proves to be an interesting site based on a book that is also a blog. It focuses primarily on Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation.

Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation is a new book that offers first-person accounts of how the personal media revolution will impact movies, music, computing, television and games. Release date: May 9, 2005.

Jury awards judge $2.1M in libel case

A jury yesterday found that the Boston Herald libeled Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy in a series of stories dating back to 2002, and ordered the paper to pay damages of $2.1 million.

Herald Publisher Patrick J. Purcell immediately vowed to appeal the verdict, which came after a month-long trial and nearly a week of deliberation.

“We’d like to thank the jury for their diligence on this very complicated case,” Purcell said. “However, we believe the First Amendment allows news organizations to provide uninhibited coverage of government and public figures, and we will continue to cover them vigorously.”

Purcell also expressed “complete faith” in reporter David Wedge, who also was found to have libeled Murphy. “We are confident this decision will be reversed on appeal,” Purcell said.

The verdict came just one week after the state’s highest court upheld a $2.1 million libel verdict against The Boston Globe in a case involving a former doctor.

Free trade of Ideas in a Journalistic World

History of Blogs
Dalzell referred to the free trade in ideas, also known as the marketplace of ideas.

Weblogs have created a panic stricken world of journalists. Once the popular tool spread worldwide, ideas and free trade became an issue for not only journalists, but our society as a whole. When online journalism made its debut, nobody realized what an impact it would have on society. They did, however, believe that the role of a journalist and the availability of a free market in ideas would drastically change. Contrary to this thought, they have remained relatively stable. Our textbook, Online Journalism, states that online journalism has its own unique characteristics.

“In journalism, writers and editors are concerned with three promary entities when preparing stories for publication of broadcast. These are the facts, the medium and the audience. Every news writing or editing course tells aspiring journalists how to put facts together into stories, and higher-level classes often deal with the particulars of crafting stories for different types of media. Yet there is comparitively little effort put into understanding the audience for each medium. For online journalists, this can be a fatal error because the online news audience has its own unique characteristics.”

I think internet journalism is very different from any other journalistic media and it allows people to think outside of the box. It gives them a chance to step into a realm of creativity that would be hard to otherwise overcome. The ideas on the internet and in online journalism are stimulating to the ideas a user might have. There is potential to take one idea, see something else and make it exceptionally different by increasing the thought put into it original concept. Internet communication also raises the bar for excellence and innovation. I think it is essential for journalists to be at the hub of news and ideas. Therefore the concept of free trade in ideas must include online journalism and especially blogs. Blogs are an outlet for people to not only express their beliefs, but share their ideas worldwide. I don’t think that people will alter the way they express their ideas or their methods of creativity to cater to a specific crowd of people, knowing that the entire world can read what they write.

I think that the cacophony of internet speech strengthens the marketplace immensely. It is an entirely new avenue for journalists to pursue. Even those who aren’t journalists have the opportunity to think about new ideas. I think each element of online journalism is inclusive of a marketplace of ideas. They can each relate to the other and allow for a further communication between users.

Jury Awards judge $2.1M in libel case

A jury yesterday found that the Boston Herald libeled Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy in a series of stories dating back to 2002, and ordered the paper to pay damages of $2.1 million.

Herald Publisher Patrick J. Purcell immediately vowed to appeal the verdict, which came after a month-long trial and nearly a week of deliberation.

“We’d like to thank the jury for their diligence on this very complicated case,” Purcell said. “However, we believe the First Amendment allows news organizations to provide uninhibited coverage of government and public figures, and we will continue to cover them vigorously.”

Purcell also expressed “complete faith” in reporter David Wedge, who also was found to have libeled Murphy. “We are confident this decision will be reversed on appeal,” Purcell said.

Balancing Act: How News Portals Serve Up Political Stories

The competition with any political race is tight, but not only for candidates. The competition to see which journalist can produce the quickest and most accurate story.

Google News uses computer algorithms to identify top stories while Yahoo News favors old-fashioned human editors. But do Google’s automated search results display a conservative bias?

Google blogger has left the building

Mark Jen, a blogger whose candid comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month, has left the company.

“Mark is no longer an employee at Google,” a Google representative said in response to an inquiry Tuesday. Efforts to reach Jen for comment were not immediately successful.

Jen’s departure comes less than a month after he joined Google as part of a wave of new hires and began recording his impressions of his new employer, including criticisms, in his blog.

Employee blogging is on the rise, sparking increasing clashes between workers and management over the line between appropriate and inappropriate commentary. In one recent dispute, a Delta Air Lines flight attendant lost her job after posting photos of herself in uniform on her blog.

A Microsoft contractor lost his job last year after he took some pictures of Apple G5 computers being unloaded onto the software company’s campus and posted them to his blog.

When Bloggers Commit Journalism

The USC School of Journalism has debated several issues regarding Joournalists and bloggers. They raised some interesting questions so take a look and see if you agree or not.

When do webloggers commit journalism? What do informed amateurs and niche experts bring to the media ecosystem? Should journalists blog?  And should they rely on weblogs as news sources? Should bloggers and those in traditional media engage in a dance of fear and loathing, or do both sides stand to gain from the other? Should blogging be taught in journalism classes?

Mac Mini might inspire buyers in mass quantities

With a few tweaks, Apple’s tiny Mac Mini could be transformed into a multimedia powerhouse to run a home entertainment center.

Look to spend slightly more than $1,000 to turn a Mini into a combo DVD, digital photo and music player, TiVo-like TV recorder-and-playback unit and home video editor.

Souping it up wouldn’t require big tech skills — most of the add-ons can be ordered through Apple’s Web site when purchasing the computer.

WYFF loses power due to cell phone activity

As I was watching WYFF news earlier this morning, the station suddenly went out. After 3 minutes of hearing the employees of WYFF frantically figure out the problem and watching a black screen, power was restored. I thought it was funny that I could hear the people who were apparently not prepared for such a problem. When they returned, there was a voice over saying they were returning to their regularly schedule program and had technical difficulties due to lines being crossed on a cell phone tower that interferred with theirs. Who would have thought that cell phone lines and television lines would have been crossed?

Did anyone else see this?!

Stem Cell Lines Reported Contaminated

The human embryonic stem cells available for research are contaminated with nonhuman molecules from the culture medium used to grow the cells, researchers report.

The nonhuman cell-surface sialic acid can compromise the potential uses of the stem cells in humans, say scientists at the University of California, San Diego. Their study was published Sunday in the online edition of Nature Medicine.