ABC News and Facebook team up for political debates

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From today’s New York Times

ABC News and Facebook have formally established a partnership — the site’s first with a news organization — that allows Facebook members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new “U.S. Politics” category.

To underscore their collaboration, the two organizations will announce today that they are jointly sponsoring Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire on Jan. 5, three days before the primary election there.

“Through this partnership, we want to extend the dialogue both before and after the debate,” said Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president for business development.

The announcements are another sign that news organizations are looking to capitalize on the potential power of Facebook, which began as a database of college friendships, and other social networking sites. Media companies like The New York Times and The Washington Post have produced pages for use on Facebook and some newspapers, magazines and television stations have recently invited users to join special pages that are set up to follow reporters’ political coverage. But ABC’s new relationship is intended to be deeper…

Another interesting symbiotic relationship.

Activating the amygdala

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Funny what one finds in the Telegraph…

Plunging stock prices ignite the same circuits in your brain that respond to the snarl of a lion. Just a flash of the red colour that symbolises a downtick is enough to excite the circuitry in your brain – and to make reflective thinking more difficult…

Summer’s been cancelled — for some hacks

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I watched the second half of the England-Croatia match in utter disbelief — not at the result, but at the state of the pitch, which was like that of a Conference League club after a bad winter. And this is supposed to be Britain’s national stadium.

My colleague, Peter Preston, has been watching the impact of the match on the football media…

When England – or, indeed, any home country – fails to qualify for a World Cup or Euro championship, it’s not just the fans who feel let down. The travelling press misses its big adventure, too. Scores of expert correspondents who might have been having a wonderful time in central Europe are stuck at home with the wife, dog and garden. The nights in the beer halls, the schnitzels and fondues, the expenses chits… all suddenly evaporate.

‘The first thing that happened when I got in on the morning after was a message from the managing editor asking me to re-budget my summer spending,’ said one doleful sports editor. He was not alone. Good news for Croatia was dire news for the UK’s growth editorial industry: sports journalism.

One myth of old Fleet Street is that hacks don’t care. But they do. They are genuine fans, true footie junkies. Their bosses are hooked on national moments, and also gathered around the TV in the office last Wednesday, part of an audience 11 million strong enjoying a national moment that might shift a few copies as well. This feels like disaster for them because it upends expectations, cancels hotels, planes, travel plans – and leaves a lumpen month of nothingness where excitement ought to be…

Aw, poor dears.

Kindling for a new market?

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This morning’s Observer column…

It’s the end-of-the-book story again. Last week, Amazon launched its Kindle electronic book reader, amid corporate hopes that it would become the ‘iPod of e-readers’. Strange, isn’t it, how everyone now aspires to create the ‘next iPod’?

The Kindle is a neat gadget that is the size of a paperback book, weighs 10.3 ounces and doesn’t beep. Its display gives a good approximation of the clarity of print on a six-inch screen. Of course it relies on battery power, but Amazon claims that you can get up to 30 hours of reading before having to plug it in for a two-hour recharge. It can hold up to 200 books. In sleep mode, the device displays tasteful images of ancient texts, early printing presses and classic authors like Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen….

How to avoid bunglers at the Revenue

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Good advice from Jill Insley.

I won’t bore you with my views about the complete uselessness and incompetence of HM Revenue and Customs, which failed to learn any lessons from two previous data losses in September and October. Instead, I would like to point out to prospective parents who may, quite understandably, feel nervous about signing up for child benefit following this debacle, that there is a very simple way around the issue of providing HMRC with your current account details.

It will only work with savings accounts run by institutions (such as the Skipton building society, which told me about this) that are not clearing banks. You can elect to have your child benefit paid straight into a savings account. This means that, instead of having to supply your own current account number and sort code to the HMRC and anyone it cares to share that information with, you provide the number and sort code of the bank account used by your savings institution, plus the reference number of your own savings account. Much harder to crack for your average fraudster.

Titanic not sinking, “just sharing water with icebergs”, says shipping advisor

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Whenever the future of media is discussed, those who work in the broadcasting industry bristle at any suggestion that TV’s in long-term decline. There’s no evidence for that, they protest. People are watching as much TV as ever. Even young people. Here’s the latest protest, by Tess Alps, who describes her role as “to help advertisers get the best out of television, which means providing them with robust and reliable information.”

To say, as the research by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) claims, that young adults are “increasingly logging on rather than watching TV” misses two crucial points: that media choices are rarely either/or; and that TV and the internet are particularly complementary. Happily, there is enough electricity to enable you to go online and still watch TV afterwards. And 12% of people choose to do both simultaneously, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s Touchpoints survey, an industry-wide recognised study…

I agree that media are ‘complementary’ in the sense that symbiotic relationships evolve between them — as between mainstream journalism and blogging. But most of the ‘evidence’ currently being produced by the broadcast TV industry about business-as-usual runs counter to what I’m observing in both my age group and that of my teenage children: which is that broadcast TV, though still a significant medium, is losing its dominant position in people’s lives. Bill Thompson has a vivid way of expressing this: no child entering primary school this year will ever buy a television set, he predicts. That doesn’t mean that people will give up watching video material, or that broadcasting will disappear. But it’s place in the media ecosystem will be different, and its importance reduced.

Skype encryption stumps German police – Yahoo! News

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Well, well. Skype encryption stumps German police – Yahoo! News

WIESBADEN, Germany (Reuters) – German police are unable to decipher the encryption used in the Internet telephone software Skype to monitor calls by suspected criminals and terrorists, Germany’s top police officer said on Thursday.

It’s only a matter of time before Gordon Brown announces that Skype is to be banned in the UK.