All the news that’s fit to Digg

Posted on by

This is really interesting — a summary by the Pew Research Center of a survey conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

If someday we have a world without journalists, or at least without editors, what would the news agenda look like? How would citizens make up a front page differently than professional news people?

If a new crop of user-news sites — and measures of user activity on mainstream news sites — are any indication, the news agenda will be more diverse, more transitory, and often draw on a very different and perhaps controversial list of sources, according to a new study. The report, released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), compares the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

In a week when the mainstream press was focused on Iraq and the debate over immigration, the three leading user-news sites — Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us — were more focused on stories like the release of Apple’s new iphone and that Nintendo had surpassed Sony in net worth. The report also found subtle differences in three other forms of user-driven content within one site: Yahoo News’ Most Recommended, Most Viewed, and Most Emailed…

The full report is available here.

This is useful in redressing the balance in the debate about the relationship of user-driven media to mainstream journalism. There’s an assumption that almost anything would be better than the skewed news agendas of mainstream media — that the Jeffersonian ‘marketplace in ideas’ will lead, inevitably, to closer approximations to the truth. This survey, sketchy and inadequate though it is, and Cass Sunstein’s new book, Infotopia: how many minds produce knowledge, (which I’ve been reading) cast some doubts on that comfortable assumption.

Which is a bit distressing, to say the least. It’s always uncomfortable having one’s cherished illusions undermined.

Nick Carr is not in the least distressed by all this, btw. Itr probably confirms what he’s suspected all along.

Rory Cellan-Jones’s report on the survey is here.

150 years of the Irish Times to go online

Posted on by

Wow! This could be very useful to some of us who hail from that part of the world…

The Irish Times has created an online archive of nearly 150 years of content from the newspaper.

The digital catalogue contains every issue of the newspaper, from its first on March 29, 1859, to the present day and can be accessed through the paper’s website.

To create the archive, which will be officially launched in early October, the Irish Times digitised over 1,100 reels of microfilm – with each reel containing 700 page images.

Access to the reproduction newspaper pages, which are keyword searchable, will costs users from €10 for a 24-hour pass – though schools and libraries will have free access to the service…

Thanks to Bill Thompson for the link.

Do remember this

Posted on by

Easyjet employees lack the brusque ferocity of their RyanAir counterparts — which may explain why they are not quite as efficient at getting passengers on and off aircraft. But they certainly have a odd way with the English language which requires them to use the verb “do” in redundant ways. Samples from today’s flight:

  • We do hope you have a pleasant journey.
  • I do apologise: we don’t have any five-Euro notes.
  • We do thank you for flying with Easyjet.
  • We do hope to see you again soon.

    • It’s too systematic for it not to be company policy.

    Integrated transport systems

    Posted on by

    I love Holland — have done ever since I lived and worked here in the 1970s. And every time I come back I’m always taken aback by the sheer density of bicycles. The photo shows the scene that greeted me on coming out of the Centraal Station in the Hague this afternoon. Our host at dinner tonight was a very senior corporate executive: he’d come to the restaurant by bike. Can’t imagine any of his British counterparts doing that.

    Layers

    Posted on by

    Here’s a really good idea — double-decker trains. I caught one from Schiphol to the Hague. Just over 25 minutes. The Swiss are not the only people who know how to run a railway.

    Latest WMD revealed!

    Posted on by

    Er, toothpaste. Going through security at Stansted today on my way to a symposium in the Hague, I was asked if I had any liquids in my hand luggage. I answered cheerfully “no” because I hadn’t. But then my carry-on bag was diverted for the full treatment and opened for examination. After a while, the nice lady doing this pounced on my tube of toothpaste and said “Ah! This is what triggered it”. “But”, I said politely, “that’s a paste, not a liquid”. “I know”, she replied, “but the rule is, if you can spread it with a knife it’s a liquid”.

    Afterwards, I wondered why this hadn’t happened before — and realised that generally toothpaste goes in the checked-in luggage. You learn something new every day.

    Curious, too, the symbolism in learning this on the anniversary of 9/11!

    The $100 laptop — update

    Posted on by

    Jim Gettys, VP of Software for the One Laptop Per Child project was in Cambridge today and gave an impromptu seminar at the Computer Lab. It was a fascinating insight into the amount of hard work and ingenuity that has gone into the design of this elegant little gizmo:

    Jim had three of the laptops in his bag and left them out for us to examine.

    I took notes as he talked and may blog a full account later. But, looking back, the headlines are:

  • Wireless networking is central to the project, and it does mesh networking in a really neat way. My Airport card picked up the mesh immediately, and it was interesting to see the neat way the OLPC interface represents other wireless nets.
  • They’ve done a lot of hard thinking about power consumption and have come up with some very neat tricks for paring down consumption. The CPU is off much of the time, for example.
  • The display (a custom-built 7.5″ 200 dpi TFT ultra-low power consumption screen) is readable in bright sunlight. Jim had a nice slide of the laptop alongside a traditional HP laptop in blazing sunshine. Guess which screen is an unreadable black?
  • The laptop has a built-in camera — rather like the iSight built in to Intel Macs. Kids love this, apparently.
  • There are plans to sell OEM versions of the laptop in developed countries — but for considerably more than $100.
  • Conventional file systems are pretty baffling to a young kid who doesn’t know how to read yet. So the OLPC has, as its central idea, the concept of a time-ordered journal. (This also helps with decisions about what to throw away: you’re less tempted to keep old stuff).
  • The OLPC Chat protocol is “loosely based” on Jabber.
  • Open source software is a key and integral part of the project.
  • Making the machines look very much like a kids’ toy is part of the anti-theft strategy. (Any adult with one who isn’t a teacher will be suspect.) Also it helps that it doesn’t run Windows (makes it less desirable to thieves).
  • The project is running into ‘political’ difficulties in certain targeted countries. These difficulties are partly caused by certain Western companies — but, interestingly, not Microsoft. Now I wonder which large chip manufacturer might be involved?

    • After Jim had finished, he was mobbed by a few people. The students went straight for the laptops, though!

    All in all, it was a terrific event. Thanks to Jon Crowcroft for organising it.

    Postscript: The “bunny ears” on the laptop are in fact WiFi antennae!

    Windows Live Translator Beta

    Posted on by

    Hmmm… I fed the following text (from Die Zeit ) to Windows Live Translator Beta:

    Der Oberkommandierende der US-Armee im Irak, David Petraeus, hat einen Teilabzug der US-Soldaten in Aussicht gestellt. Der Einsatz der US-Streitkräfte im Irak habe die Sicherheitslage insoweit stabilisiert, dass die Zahl der Soldaten bis Mitte Juli 2008 von derzeit 168.000 auf dann etwa 130.000 zurückgeführt werden könne, sagte der General in seinem mit Spannung erwarteten Lagebericht vor dem US-Kongress. Bereits im Dezember könne eine erste Kampfbrigade von etwa 4000 Soldaten die Heimreise antreten. Einen Termin für einen vollständigen Rückzug aus dem Irak wollte Petraeus nicht nennen. Ein “voreiliger Abzug” könne “katastrophale” Folgen haben, warnte er.

    And this is what came out:

    The Commander-in-Chief of the US army in Iraq, David Petraeus, promised a partial withdrawal of the US soldiers. The employment of US armed forces in Iraq has the security situation stabilized that the number of the soldiers to in the middle of July 2008 from at present 168,000 can be attributed to then about 130,000, said the general in its with tension to expected report on the situation before the U.S. Congress to that extent. Already in December a first combat brigade of approximately 4000 soldiers can begin the home journey. Petraeus did not want to call a date for a complete retreat from Iraq. A “hasty departure” can have “catastrophic” consequences, warned it.

    I then fed it to BabelFish, which produced this:

    The Commander-in-Chief of the US army in the Iraq, David Petraeus, promised a partial departure of the US soldiers. The employment of US armed forces in the Iraq has the security situation stabilized that the number of the soldiers to in the middle of July 2008 from at present 168,000 can be attributed to then about 130,000, said the general in its with tension to expected report on the situation before congress of US to that extent. Already in December a first combat brigade of approximately 4000 soldiers can begin the home journey. Petraeus did not want to call a date for a complete retreat from the Iraq. A “hasty departure” can have “catastrophic” consequences, warned it.

    Very similar, I think you’ll agree. What a coincidence.

    The BBC iPlayer

    Posted on by

    BBC News reports that

    The UK government has responded to an electronic petition that called on it to ensure the BBC’s iPlayer works on non-Windows PCs. More than 16,000 people have signed the petition since it was created. In its response, the government said the BBC Trust had made it a condition of launching the iPlayer that it worked with other operating systems….

    The BBC has said that a Mac version of the iPlayer will be released in the autumn followed by versions for Windows Vista and mobile gadgets. Big deal. And no mention of Linux.