Friday, September 30, 2005

Weekend Reading List A sampler from my news feeds... Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media. "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entrepreneurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never..." From Jay Rosen, PressThink. Times Reporter Free From Jail; She Will Testify. Judith Miller agreed to testify in the C.I.A. leak case after she obtained a waiver offered by her source, I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. By David Johnston and Douglas Jehl, The New York Times. Is the glass half full or half empty? New Scientist reports that "a beer mat that knows when a glass is nearly empty and automatically asks for a refill has been created by thirsty researchers in Germany. Andreas Butz at the University of Munich and Michael Schmitz from Saarland University came up with the idea while out drinking with their students." [via Smartmobs] Ig Nobels set to celebrate dumb smarts. Mini-opera, mini-lectures share stage with science giants, 24-second lectures. (The 15th 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be held Oct. 6 at 7:30 p.m. inside Harvard's Sanders Theatre.) [Harvard Gazette, one of the university's first "official" RSS feeds, joining the feeds from Berkman Center weblog community, some of which are more active than others] Blog Readership Doubles. Technology is making it easier to ignore mainstream media advertising. Instead, consumers are using Web logs, mobile messaging, comparison shopping Web sites, and word-of-mouth to make buying decisions, according to Forrester Research Inc. Data released Tuesday by the firm reported 10% of consumers read blogs at least once a week, compared with 5% a year ago. Really Simple Syndication feeds (RSS) are used by 6%, compared to 2% in 2004. [Internet Daily, via MicroPersuasion] What's Cool Online? Teenagers Render Verdict. As part of Advertising Week 2005, interactive advertising agencies tried to answer the question of what teenagers want. By Julie Bosman, The New York Times. Evolution Lawsuit Opens in Pennsylvania. Intelligent design is not science, has no support from any major American scientific organization and does not belong in a public school science classroom, a prominent biologist testified on the opening day of the nation's first legal battle over whether it is permissible to teach the fledgling "design" theory as an alternative to evolution. By Laurie Goodstein, The New York Times. Evolution Lawsuit Opens in Pennsylvania. Intelligent design is not science, a prominent biologist testified in the legal battle over teaching the "design" theory as an alternative to evolution. By Laurie Goodstein, The New York Times. (The last two will be an illustration for a class discussion about the length of effective news leads. The first version is the actual lead of the Times story. The second is the shorter summary from the RSS feed.) More to come, maybe... 1:05:10 AM    comment []

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