My Brother-in-Law Appears to be bigger than Obama in Swedish news site

See for yourself. Kevin Lampe is clearly bigger than Obama, though he was talking political strategy to the Swedes.

Media are extensions of our senses

I didn't say that. McLuhan did. But it is profoundly true, though often ignored.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Companies should not dismiss staff who use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo at work as merely time-wasters, a Demos study suggests. Attempts to control employees' use of such software could damage firms in the long run by limiting the way staff communicate, the think tank said.

Online to Print to Pay for It

Bluffton Today is one of the first citizen journalism outfits online in the USA. They followed the online to print model, and will begin charging for the print version in December.

Where is e-paper as we come to need it?

clipped from npaper-wehaa.com BT won’t be free Dec. 1 NEWS Bluffton Today will no longer be free beginning Dec. 1, publisher Tim Anderson announced today. With newsprint and ink costs skyrocketing and a tough economy pinching newspaper advertisers, Bluffton Today had no choice but to find a way to cover expenses, he said. “Converting to a paid newspaper was not an easy decision,” Anderson said. “We studied every possible solution but the bottom line is nothing else made financial sense.” On Dec. 1, Bluffton Today will cost a quarter at newsstands (75 cents on Sunday). Readers who sign up for home delivery will get a discount. Editor Kyle Poplin said, “Thanks to our readers’ input, we’ve become a model for community journalism. Now we need our readers’ help more than ever during these tough times.” INSIDE Column by Tim Anderson, page 5a Column by Kyle Poplin, page 5a Column by Tim Wood, page 4a

Why Slashdot is a good news source

OMG, it took the justice system years to crack down on Jon Burge, notorious police commander who promoted torture as an interrogation technique in Chicago. Drones routinely bomb innocents, oh I mean collateral damage, in Pakistan. Now the military wants packs of robots. Anyone seen John Connor or his ma lately?

clipped from hardware.slashdot.org Packs of Robots Will Hunt Down Uncooperative Humans Ostracus writes "The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to 'develop a software/hardware suite that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject. The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject ... Typical robots for this type of activity are expected to weigh less than 100 Kg and the team would have three to five robots.'" To be fair, they plan to use the Multi-Robot Pursuit System for less nefarious-sounding purposes as well. They note that the robots would "have potential commercialization within search and rescue, fire fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."

Via Slashdot more on RFIDS that are not secure

Image via Wikipedia

Despite my Senator's assurance that the new passports are protected by their covers, it seems they are not secure.

clipped from goodgearguide.com.au United States Passport Cards issued by the U.S. Department of State and EDLs (enhanced driver's licenses) from the state of Washington contain RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags that can be scanned at border crossings without being handed over to agents The information in these tags could be copied on to another, off-the-shelf tag, which might be used to impersonate the legitimate holder of the card if a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents at the border didn't see the card itself, the researchers said. Another danger is that the tags can be read from as far as 150 feet away in some situations, so criminals could read them without being detected. Although the tags don't contain personal information, they could be used to track a person's movements through ongoing surveillance, they said.

From The Editors Weblog

Original story

 Eric Scherer, Director of Strategic Planning and Partnerships at Agence France-Presse, at the recent World Association of Newspapers' Digital and Readership Conference in Amsterdam about his views on the increasing importance of visual journalism.