Archive | March, 2008

New version of WordPress now out

31 Mar

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages. For a short overview of the features with screenshots, it’d be best to visit our sneak peek announcement for RC1.

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Hawaii Prepares for Volcanic Danger

31 Mar

Big Island Officials Prepare for Kilauea Danger – Levels of toxic sulfur dioxide at the summit are six to ten times greater than before the eruption. “The ten-fold increasee of SO2 at the summit makes the total output for the volcano double basically, and the increased hazard from this emission source is, it’s closer to where people live and breath and visit than Pu’u ‘O’o is.” Experts say no one can know exactly what will happen next so they’re preparing for the worst.

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Study shows life was tough for ancient Egyptians

31 Mar

Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt’s old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.

Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt between 1379 and 1362 BC, built and lived in Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt for 15 years. The city was largely abandoned shortly after his death and the ascendance of the famous boy king Tutankhamun to the throne.

 

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Digital media offers triple play opportunity for broadcasters

28 Mar

Canada’s Now Public co-founder and CEO Leonard Brody spoke about the importance of citizen journalism. “What we have noticed is that people do it for social engagement. We get two million readers a month and 700 pieces of content a day. Consumers are moving towards a higher personal locality. One reason why Facebook news feeds are checked out more by users than traditional news sources is that you get information that is personally relevant.”

The site uses the crowd source model and gives complete editorial control to users. Since they use citizen journalists, often they get videos in places where other agencies have not been able to go.

Source: indiantelevision.com

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The Demise of Canadian Media

27 Mar

The latest data from comscore is not exactly new news.  It shows the most popular websites in Canada.  How many of these are Canadian?  Not too many.

 

Top 25 Properties for February 2008
______________________________________________________________________
Top 25 Properties by Number of Canadian Unique Visitors*
February 2008 vs. January 2008
Total Canada – Home and Work Locations**
Source: comScore Media Metrix 
Feb-08  Jan-08      Property                   Total Unique Visitors
0
                                                        Feb-08
Rank    Rank
1       1           Google Sites                        22,389 US
2       2           Microsoft Sites                     22,224 US
3       3           Yahoo! Sites                        16,150 US
4       4           FACEBOOK.COM                        15,145 US
5       5           eBay                                13,109 US
6       6           Wikipedia Sites                     11,367 US
7       7           AOL LLC                              9,929 US
8       8           Yellow Pages Group                   9,412 US
9       9           Amazon Sites                         8,602 US
10      10          Apple Inc.                           8,315 US
11      11          Canoe Network                        8,291 Canada
12      13          CTVglobemedia                        7,922 Canada
13      15          The Weather Network Meteomedia       7,658 US
14      12          Fox Interactive Media                7,485 US
15      17          Ask Network                          7,361 US
16      16          New York Times Digital               7,314 US
17      14          CNET Networks                        7,129 US
18      18          Viacom Digital                       6,011 US
19      19          CBC-Radio Canada Sites               5,997 Canada
20      20          Adobe Sites                          5,523 US
21      21          Time Warner – Excluding AOL          5,366 US
22      22          Gorilla Nation                       5,087 US
23      23          WhitePages                           4,876 US
24      27          Canwest Digital                      4,854 Canada
25      24          Expedia Inc                          4,495 US

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The incredible shrinking news

27 Mar

Hey, what’s that incredible sucking sound?  Oh, it’s your news…

Think we hardly get any international news in our mainstream media? Right you are. But we don’t get any domestic coverage either, unless it’s about the elections, according to the insightful but not cheerful new State of the Media Report from the great folks at the Project for Excellence in Journalism:
“The agenda of the American news media continues to narrow, not broaden. A firm grip on this is difficult but the trends seem inescapable. A comprehensive audit of coverage shows that in 2007, two overriding stories — the war in Iraq and the 2008 campaign — filled more than a quarter of the newshole and seemed to consume much of the media’s energy and resources. And what wasn’t covered was in many ways as notable as what was. Other than Iraq — and to a lesser degree Pakistan and Iran — there was minimal coverage of events overseas, some of which directly involved U.S. interests, blood and treasure. At the same time, consider the list of the domestic issues that each filled less than a single percent of the newshole: education, race, religion, transportation, the legal system, housing, drug trafficking, gun control, welfare, Social Security, aging, labor, abortion and more.”

Source: blogs.law.harvard.edu via mtippett

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YouTube: 10 Hours of Content Every Minute

13 Mar

Frank Smith looks at the implications of Youtube’s volume of content.  Some interesting questions arise.

NEW YORK — Media Summit — During a panel here at the Media Summit yesterday, YouTube Inc. ‘s Philip Inghelbrecht, strategic partner development manager, dropped this nugget of information: Ten hours of fresh content is uploaded to YouTube every minute.

“If you can’t solve the search question quickly enough that’s a problem,” said Inghelbrecht.

But this explosion of digital content could come at a cost. A study
released by IDC sponsored by information management firm EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) found that
the total volume of digital content being produced today has exceeded
existing storage capabilities. IDC estimates that 281 billion Gbytes
were uploaded in 2007, which amounts to about 45 Gbytes of content per
each human on earth.

Source: contentinople.com

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AOL to buy Bebo for just under 1 billion

13 Mar

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AOL announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire
Bebo (http://www.bebo.com), a leading
global social media network. Together with its AIM and ICQ personal
communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position
in the fast growing world of social media with a network of
approximately 80 million unique users.

Source: biz.yahoo.com

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SAI 25 Update: Now Analyzing Our Finalists…And We Need Your Help!

11 Mar

We made the list (so far):

2008 SAI 25 Finalists (Partial List, Alphabetical Order*)

4INFO
56.com
Adconium
Adify
Angelsoft
Associated Content
Bebo
Betfair
Clickable
CTS Media
Efficient Frontier
Etsy
Federated Media
Glam
Huffington Post
iPart.cn
KickApps
KooXoo
Liba.com
LinkExperts
Live Gamer
Loopt
Lotame
Mahalo
Metacafe
Mint
Now Public
Oanda
OpenX
Ozon
Powerset
Rock You
Social Media
Spot Runner
Stardoll
TheLadders
Thumbplay
Traffiq
Trialpay
Tudou
Weatherbill
Woome
Xactly
Yandex
Yelp
Youku
Zazzle

Source: alleyinsider.com

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EconSM08: More Speakers, More Panels

11 Mar

Here’s your chance to see NowPublic’s own Leonard Brody live and in person. 

Our EconSM conference planning is kicking into high gear, and we have several new speakers and topics to announce (with more to come this week):

— We’ll hear from Jeff Weiner, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) EVP-Network Division, who, among other responsibilities, has the key role of making sure Yahoo’s content, technology and ambitious social media efforts finally mesh. For Weiner, like other Yahoo execs, the goal as Microsoft looms isn’t business as usual—it’s full steam ahead.

— We’ll be diving deeply into the intersection of advertising, entertainment and social media with Frank Cooper, VP-Marketing, Pepsi-Cola North America; Gordon Paddison, EVP-Marketing, New Line Cinema and Dick Glover, CEO, Funny or Die.

— We’ll be examining the ROI for media companies layering community into their existing sites with Jeff Price, President, SI Digital; Kinsey Wilson, Executive Editor, USA Today; and Thomas Mueller, VP/Creative Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

— And we’ll probe the current investment landscape with the likes of Geoff Yang, Founding Partner, Redpoint Ventures; Michael Hirshland, General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners; Ross Levinsohn, Partner, Velocity Investment Group.

Other confirmed speakers include Leonard Broady, CEO, NowPublic; Dalton Caldwell, CEO, Imeem; Chuck DeFeo, GM, Townhall.com; Shawn Gold, Social Approach; Betsy Morgan, CEO, The Huffington Post; Keith Richman, CEO, Break.com; Robert Scoble, FastCompany.TV; and Kara Swisher, AllThingsD.

Early bird registration will be closing shortly, so click here to register for the conference April 29, 2008 in Los Angeles.  Check the conference site for hotel details; we have great room rates for you.

For sponsorship queries for EconSM, contact our business side at advertising AT contentnext.com.

Source: paidcontent.org

10th biggest VC financing in Canada this Quarter

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