The Final War ! Yahoo vs. Goggle . They are going Going Mobile !!

Yes it is the ratings battle between Yahoo! and Google 2006 .
They are the ones playing for the World Series of wireless & cyberspace.
[ And all the money it will make. ]

Yeah , there are Amazons, and
E-Bayers skirmishing around them. But for the first part
of this century, Google & Yahoo are a part of life on the
internet. Everyone goes there sometimes.

Will Google now
also rule the wireless world? Or maybe Yahoo -- who I think
is a better search engine~ will finally beat Google, and win the Wireless World Series.

Probably not.
Gmail beats Y-mail in my book for utility.
I go with Google to do it again in wireless. We will see.

`` TP
-------------------

Yahoo, Google Going Mobile,

David A. Utter ,

Staff Writer ,

Published: 2006-01-06 ,

www.webpronews.com :


"Both Internet players have new products ready to roll for mobile devices, with Google making another mobile-centric deal while Yahoo debuts its Go service.

The Consumer Electronics Show became a mobile Internet playground, as Google and Yahoo made announcements that will broaden the presence of their brands on mobile handsets."

--------------

Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet - New York Times

~~ There is a bit of irony to me in the
New York Times reporting on the
Internet's rising power --
through personal blogs and
web pages -- as a growing check
and balance to the mainstream
media powers
{ Of which of course the Times is one.]
Yeah, there has been some
democratization of journalism
because of the Internet, but the blogsphere is still a small fish in the
Corporate Media Ocean.
And the business of actually
reporting the news – what is the
news story of the day --- is
dominated by the same mainstream
Wire & Broadcast services
that where in charge before the
rise of the Internet.

Internet based writers & bloggers,
have yet to become – for
the most -- the “reporters” of
news. The early promise of
Internet muckrackers – like Matt
Druge – becoming a powerful
force , really has yet to
emerge, and may never. As with
the mediums of print, radio
and then television , the power
of gathering and disseminating
original reporting on the web falls into
the hands of mega-media companies,
interested in circulations,
advertising revenues and
ratings, more than independent
reporting of the news that
really matters.
[See this link for a litte more backround]
~~ TP

Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet - New York Times

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: January 2, 2006

"Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, or so goes the old saw. For decades, the famous and the infamous alike largely followed this advice. Even when subjects of news stories felt they had been misunderstood or badly treated, they were unlikely to take on reporters or publishers, believing that the power of the press gave the press the final word.
The Internet, and especially the amplifying power of blogs, is changing that."

CBS News counters bloggers with 'nonbudsman' | Tech News on ZDNet

CBS News counters bloggers with 'nonbudsman' | Tech News on ZDNet: "After a controversial run-in with bloggers last year that helped sink '60 Minutes Wednesday,' CBS has hired a 'nonbudsman' to write a blog that will go behind the scenes at the news division."

Mass Media vs. Mirco-media.

Radio Free America

~~ Video did not Kill the Radio Star,, big biz like Clear Channel did though.
BUT community-based radio stations hold out hope for making radio relevant again. ~~~
~~ technopolitical ~

"American Prospect Online - ViewWeb
Radio Free America Low-power radio stations may not have Clear Channel’s candlepower, but what they lack in wattage they make up in commitment"

"From the beginning, independent, community-based radio stations picked up on the campaign and used the air to organize support for the boycott. And in December 2003, the Prometheus Radio Project -- a small, nonprofit made up of former radio-pirates-turned-media-advocates -- organized a band of volunteers to travel to Immokalee, Florida, for a weekend to help the workers set up their own low-power radio station, WCIW. Since then, says Ramirez, the station, which broadcasts in multiple languages, has helped to unite and organize the diverse group of workers and has provided a platform for reaching out to political allies across the country."

~

BBC NEWS | Technology | Pioneering net community sold off

~~~ Is the internet getting old ?
Will I be telling my grandchildren that I used "The Well" ,
when it first went online !!"

Even though i did not.

{ Though yours truly was online in 1986 through GREENLINK--- which was Greenpeace 's early & primitive global internet network---- when i was a staffer in the NYC office. }~~` . TP

" Pioneering net community sold off"


The pioneering electronic community known as The Well is being sold off.

Set up in 1985 before the net was widely used, The Well helped to define the basic ethic and etiquette of online life.

Many of the early members of The Well have gone on to become the guiding lights of net as it has risen to its current level of prominence.

"Web map tracks demand for major news"

"What's next? Web map tracks demand for major news"
By Eric Auchard

"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - It's debatable how big a deal any specific news event is compared to all the other human mayhem that occurs each day. Journalists, editors, historians and the guy at the end of the bar could probably never agree.

A news mapping service introduced on Thursday by Akamai Technologies Inc. promises to give unprecedented insight into the relative hunger that millions of Internet users have to learn of breaking events minute-by-minute."

~ ~ I hope this does not become the dog wagging the tail.
Just because a newsstory is popular, does not mean it is also "news" worthy. ~~ tp~~~

"Akamai, which helps speed delivery of 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic over its network, is looking to count the sum of page requests across 100 major news sites it serves to rank interest in major events on a scale never seen before.

The Akamai Net News Index provides a map of six global regions and measures the current appetite for news relative to average daily demand in terms of millions of visitors to news sites per minute, per week, within each geographic region."

Spikes in traffic can reveal the next wave of news demand.

Study: More Using Web for Political News

~~~~ Ah , but are they getting substance in their news , reporting that really makes them think about and deeply examine the important life and death issues of our time ?

Or are they using the internet to get just simple minded knee-jerk , Rush Limbaugh-Fox- O'Reilly style junk ??

I report you decide !! ~~ TP

"Study: More using Web for political news"

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP INTERNET WRITER

"It's a channel difference not a substantive difference," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet group and author of the study. "Newspaper executives probably now have to think of themselves less as newspaper people and more as content people."

NEW YORK (AP) - Reliance on the Internet for political news during last year's presidential campaign grew sixfold from 1996, while the influence of newspapers dropped sharply, according to a study issued Sunday.

Eighteen percent of American adults cited the Internet as one of their two main sources of news about the presidential races, compared with 3 percent in 1996. The reliance on television grew slightly to 78 percent, up from 72 percent.

Meanwhile, the influence of newspapers dropped to 39 percent last year, from 60 percent in 1996, according to the joint, telephone-based survey from the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Nonetheless, Americans who got campaign news over the Internet were more likely to visit sites of major news organizations like CNN and The New York Times (43 percent) rather than Internet-only resources such as candidate Web sites and Web journals, known as blogs (24 percent).

Twenty-eight percent said they primarily used news pages of America Online Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other online services, which carry dispatches from traditional news sources like The Associated Press and Reuters.

"It's a channel difference not a substantive difference," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet group and author of the study. "Newspaper executives probably now have to think of themselves less as newspaper people and more as content people."

The study also found the political news audience more mainstream - more women, minorities, older Americans and lower-income users than before.

Fifty-eight percent of political news users cited convenience as their main reason for using the Internet. This group was more likely to use the Internet sites of traditional news organizations or online services.

But one-third of political news consumers cited a belief that they did not get all the news and information they wanted from papers and television, and another 11 percent said the Web had information not available elsewhere. These individuals were more likely to visit blogs or campaign sites for information.

And blogs, Rainie said, likely had an indirect influence on what campaigns talked about and what news organizations covered.

Blogs, for instance, have been credited with forcing an apology from CBS News anchor Dan Rather for last fall's "60 Minutes" report on President Bush's National Guard service.

Blogs "are having a modest level of impact on the voter side and probably a more dramatic impact on the institutional side," Rainie said. "Blogs are still a realm where very, very active and pretty elite, both technologically oriented people and politically oriented people go."

The study also found that the reliance on the Internet for political news was most pronounced among those with high-speed connections at home - 38 percent among broadband users against 28 percent among all Internet users. Reliance on newspapers was roughly even between those groups - 36 percent for broadband and 38 percent for all users.

Forty percent of Internet users found the Internet important in helping them decide for whom to vote, while 20 percent said the online information made a difference.

The random survey of 2,200 adults, including 1,324 Internet users, was conducted Nov. 4-22 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

==============

"Study warns of junk-news diet" / From Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2005

This Blog is NOT Junk news !!!!!

Free Press News : Printable Format

Study warns of junk-news diet
From Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2005
By James Rainey

American consumers confront an ever-broader river of news from myriad sources, but the standard for gathering and presenting the information tends to be “faster, looser and cheaper” than in the past, according to a survey of the news business to be released today by a media watchdog group.

Internet blogs and cable TV programs have led the trend toward a “journalism of assertion” that relies less on reporting than personal opinion, reported the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is affiliated with Columbia University.

That trend makes it more important for journalists “to document the reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it,” the organization concluded in its annual report.

On two of the top media stories of 2004, newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet merited a mixed verdict, the study found.

On one hand, the study’s review of 250 randomly selected stories buttressed the complaint that President Bush got worse coverage than Sen. John F. Kerry in the 2004 presidential race. Coverage of the war in Iraq, on the other hand, tended to be far more neutral than some critics had charged — with 2,200 stories containing roughly an even mix of positive, negative and neutral accounts.

The second annual report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is based in Washington, focused more on trends and prospects than on content. The considerable change facing the industry is revealed in a few facts: Online advertising has increased 30% to almost $10 billion in one year and estimated readership of blogs has increased 58% in six months. About 32 million Americans say they have obtained information from the Web logs, or journals, known as blogs.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the research project, said that with the growth in Internet commentary, the culture of opinion journalism has expanded exponentially. Blogging has its value — exposing, the report said, hasty reporting by CBS News on memos that referred to Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War. But it can also lead the public astray, the report found, such as when it fomented the “unfounded conspiracy theory” that Republicans stole the presidential election in Ohio.

Rather than taking the time to gather and scrutinize each piece of information — the model for the mainstream media — the report said some bloggers hewed to another philosophy: “Publish anything, especially points of view, and the reporting and verification will occur afterward in the response of fellow bloggers.”

Although the traditional media continue to have struggles of their own, the public’s view of the believability of news organizations has stabilized somewhat in the last two years, according to the study, which relied on research by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. About 35% of Americans said the media get the facts straight.

Only better reporting and increased transparency about its tactics will help the media regain credibility, the study concluded.

“Since citizens have a deeper range of information at their fingertips, the level of proof in the press must rise accordingly,” it said. “In effect, the era of trust-me journalism has passed and the era of show-me journalism has begun.”

For its analysis of media content in 2004, the study team partnered with researchers at four universities to review coverage of two big stories and other trends.

The presidential race

Days were randomly selected from throughout the race to profile the equivalent of one month of coverage. Two hundred and fifty stories were then dissected. Any that had twice as many positive comments as negative ones were deemed “positive” and the reverse for negative references. The review found 36% of the stories about Bush to be negative, compared with 12% negative about Kerry. It found 20% positive stories about Bush, compared with less than 30% positive about his Democratic challenger.

The study did not try to assess whether the outcome reflected partisan bias against the Republican Bush, a tendency to view incumbents more harshly, or some other cause.

The war in Iraq

Using a similar methodology on 2,187 stories, the study found reporting of the conflict had slightly more stories with a clearly negative tone than stories with a clearly positive tone — 25% negative, compared to 20% positive. The largest number, 35%, had no decided tone and another 20% were on multiple subjects with no apparent tilt.

Newspaper coverage most closely mirrored that balance, while Fox had the most pronounced slant. The cable TV outlet aired twice as many positive as negative pieces about the war.

That finding may be partly related to a larger tendency at Fox on all kinds of stories that allows on-air personalities to offer their personal opinions. Seven out of 10 Fox stories reviewed in the study included opinions not attributed to reporting. That happened in less than one of 10 CNN stories and in less than one of three stories aired on MSNBC.

Rosenstiel linked the opinionated nature of Fox programs partly to big-name personalities such as Bill O’Reilly, whose programs are built largely around his musings. But even field reporters on the network employ a colloquial style. In one instance, a Fox journalist expressed hope that Iraqi forces, rather than Americans, capture a terrorism suspect. In another, a reporter speculated that Martha Stewart might want to buy back her company’s stock.

Despite the many issues raised about the media’s reliability and challenges in holding audiences (newspaper readership dropped again in 2004 and the audience for cable television stopped growing), the mainstream media continued to be a big moneymaker.

Corporations have been slow, however, to fold that money back into newsgathering. The number of editorial employees at American newspapers shrank by 500 in the most recent year studied. Local TV stations employ fewer news people than they did in the boom economy of 2000.

The study found surprising the lack of investment in websites devoted to news; 62% of those working for Internet news outlets said their newsrooms had suffered cuts in the last three years, far greater than the 37% of news people at traditional outlets who said their staffs had been cut.

The reductions came despite the spiraling Internet audience and seemed tied to a larger trend in American journalism that emphasizes “prepackaging and presenting information, not … gathering it,” the study concluded.

The study recommended that news consumers, like dieters, become more discerning.

“The real crisis may be news obesity,” the study said, “consuming too little that can nourish citizens and too much that can bloat them.”
======================

This article is from Los Angeles Times. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their website and register an account to view all their articles on the web. Support quality journalism.

Reporter's shield bill introduced in House , © 2005 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

~ ~ ~ The Court ruling that reporters
can be compelled to reveal their
sources is bad news. Luckily,
Congress can fix the situation
A Republican and a Democrat
co-sponsoring a much need

piece of legislation. ~~ TP

Reporter's shield bill introduced in House
© 2005 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Journalists would be shielded from
being forced to reveal confidential
sources under the
"Free Flow of Information Act."
Reporters must testify in CIA leak probe

BY TOM BRUNEWASHINGTON BUREAU

February 16, 2005

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that two reporters must testify before a federal grand jury about their confidential sources in a probe trying to determine who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of a covert CIA officer.

In an expected ruling, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that held in contempt Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times for refusing to testify.

Time and the Times Tuesday said ---- { what an intereresting pharse, almost poetic ~~tp ] ---- they would appeal the decision to the full circuit and possibly the Supreme Court, and would seek a stay to keep the reporters out of jail.

The publications had tried to quash the subpoenas based on the First Amendment and reporters' privilege to protect confidential sources under federal common law, which is based on practice than on statutes.

In October, District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled against them.The decision prompted calls from Floyd Abrams, attorney for both reporters, and groups such as Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, for Congress to enact a federal shield law to permit reporters to protect confidential sources.

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.
----------------------------------

The War on the Web Sites to see on the road to Baghdad.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2080407/
The War on the Web
Sites to see on the road to Baghdad.
By Avi Zenilman
Updated Wednesday, March 19, 2003, at 3:05 PM PT

The Iraq invasion will be the first major war on the Web. When the bombs start dropping, millions of Americans will crowd the Internet to catch up on the latest news, see pictures, and send e-mail to loved ones in danger. After you've checked out Slate—your first stop, right?—here's where you should you go for updates, speculation, on-the-ground blogging, official statements, and even war comedy.

Mainstream Media
The special Iraq Web sites for the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC, and CNN are all good sources for late-breaking news, streaming video, maps, and nifty interactive backgrounders.

If you find the American Iraq pages overwhelming, then jump across the Atlantic to England's Guardian newspaper's Special Report: Iraq. The page's efficient organization and solid reporting make it easier to use than the American news sites. Don't miss the Guardian's "Weblog," which is less a blog than a portal to the day's best journalism. Track the effects of the war on the global economy and on oil markets at Bloomberg's energy markets page.

Background Information
What exactly is a BLU-118 Thermobaric bomb? How about a GBU-16 Paveway II? Globalsecurity.org has an excellent encyclopedia of the weapons and vehicles the United States will use in the war. Its Target Iraq page is jam-packed with links and specific military information. The site also publishes U.N. documents and resolutions.

Defensetech.org is a blog that provides a boatload of information on new military technologies and national security. While not organized in any systematic way, it always has something new and interesting.

The Council on Foreign Relations runs a superb Iraq Resource Center with everything from a timeline to journal articles.

The Official Story
(Almost) daily State Department briefings can be found here. The White House posts free video of all presidential speeches and announcements (as well as Ari Fleischer's press briefings). Britain's official briefings are also available.

Also online is the Iraq News Agency, a mouthpiece for Saddam's positions and propaganda.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Iraq crisis section shows how the U.S. government is conveying the news to the people of the Middle East.

The United Nations' official Iraq page is hopelessly cluttered and often unresponsive (not unlike the organization itself), but if you can get it to work, it's a great clearinghouse.

Blogwar
Dear_raed is a must-read blog by a current Baghdad resident. Read his fascinating March 16 ramble about how he reluctantly supports the U.S. march to war and doubts the influence of fundamentalist Islamism in Iraq. It's not clear how the author manages to evade Saddamite censorship and scrutiny. We sent an e-mail asking how he does it. If he replies, we will tell you.

Www.kevinsites.net is a blog by Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent stationed in northern Iraq. Sites' reporting is unvarnished, direct, and full of the nitty-gritty details of war reporting A March 17 post, "Whispers of War," is a window on the professional rivalries that persist, even a war zone.

The Middle-East Reaction
Arab News is an English-language, semiofficial Saudi media outlet. Although its reporting may not always be reliable, it suggests how this war is playing in Riyadh. Lebanon's Daily Star is more trustworthy but much less entertaining. For a quick digest of how the Middle-East media portrays the war, the World Press Review's Middle-East section is excellent.

Al Jazeera video is available at www.favo.tv, an English-language Web site that streams from various TV and radio stations worldwide. It is often unreliable, so if you understand Arabic, the official Al Jazeera site may be a better source for the broadcasts.

Ha'aretz's special Iraq section will be a valuable source of news if Saddam decides to attack Israel. For a more offbeat Israeli view of the war, check out the Iraq-centric ribbityfrog.blogspot.com.

If Chatterbox's Kurd Sellout Watch isn't enough, visit KurdMedia, a news site/portal for all things Kurdish.

Curiosities
We can't find any real-time satellite photographs on the Web that would help track the war, but Terraserver posts satellite images of nearly every world city, including Baghdad. It's hard to make out what exactly is going on in the pictures, but it's very cool nonetheless.

Should United States troops worry about sandstorms? Check out this Iraq weather map.

Who's going to lead Iraq after the war? What are the odds of capturing Osama Bin Laden by October? What will the terror alert level be in June 2003? At Tradesports you can now bet on international politics, with nothing at stake but fake money and bragging rights.

Humor
If you need a brief respite from the grim news, take a breather at Iraq Humor Central. Be sure not to miss the parody slide show. Also, check out the Saddam games section, where you can do everything from playing the role of a crazed U.N. weapons inspector to creating a goofy press conference.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2080407

a Danish court ordered an Internet news service to stop linking to Web sites of Danish newspapers

~ `Deep –Linking:

Deep-Linking is what we are doing in many of the endnote embedded hot-links here.

Many commercial website owners want to prevent deep-linking and to instead redirect any traffic linked to their web domain first to their advertisement filled homepage.

Cyber-activists believe the right to deep-link is essential for the World Wide Web to be a truly free place for the exchange of information. Commercial Internet portals believe their copyrights give them the right to control access to their deep-linked information.[15] ~~ tp

-----------

[14] For further reading on this important matter, the American Library Association's

website has a page dedicated to Deep-Link issues @ http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/deeplinking.html .

Last accessed October 17, 2004.

[15] “COPENHAGEN, Denmark, July 5 — Challenging the World Wide Web’s fundamental premise of linking, a Danish court ordered an Internet news service to stop linking to Web sites of Danish newspapers. Copenhagen’s lower bailiff’s court ruled Friday that Newsbooster.com was in direct competition with the newspapers and that the links it provided to specific news articles damaged the value of the newspapers’ advertisements.” FROM: Associated Press. Danish Court Bars Web Site’s Links. News service told to stop linking to Danish newspapers. Last accessed July 5 2002. (Page no longer available) www.msnbc.com @ http://www.msnbc.com/news/776542.asp?0na=x22475G1a

"Elderly escape loneliness by going online"

BBC Online Network: Elderly escape loneliness by going online http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1977000/1977823.stm May 13 2002: Going online has become the number one hobby for British pensioners, reports the BBC. According to a new survey conducted by BTopenworld, around 83 percent of seniors in the UK go online on a regular basis. The study indicates that pensioner’s mainly use the Internet to keep in touch with friends and family, and send an average of four emails a day. The Internet is particularly popular with older women, according to the survey findings. Nearly half of female seniors go online for the first time after they retire, and 35 percent of them say that the Net has offered them a wider circle of friends. According to the report, the Internet has also helped older people to feel more comfortable with modern society. Almost two-thirds of silver surfers in the UK said they felt more open to new experiences after having been online, while 42 percent felt they were more tolerant to the way the world was developing.

US Kids choose Internet over other media

http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905357821&rel=true

Copyright © 1995-2002 ComputerScope Ltd. All rights reserved

US Kids choose Internet over other media

Apr 08 2002: "A new study from Statistical Research indicates that one third of children in the US would choose the Internet over other media, if they were restricted to one choice."

----

--

"Internet users more mature" : www.theadvertiser.news.com.au

"Internet users more mature"

www.theadvertiser.news.com.au

01--- jan --02

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,3518057%255E911,00.html

"AUSTRALIAN Internet users have matured from curious surfers to time savers who use the world wide web to catch up on news, pay bills and do their shopping.

A Neilsen/Netrating study of 10,000 Australians who use the Internet at home found users were primarily interested in accessing sites which supplied new information or allowed users to bank or shop on-line.

Andrew Reid, a senior analyst with Neilsen, said in the past Australians had spent more time on the net but had mostly surfed with no specific focus. "They've now migrated or matured from general surfing habits to one where they're actually using the Internet for real purposes which will save them time and effort," Mr Reid said.

Mr Reid said Internet usage was up 8.6 per cent in Australia over the past 12 months but the time users spent on line had fallen.

"We expect that to accelerate over the next 12 months," he said.

"It's actually become a tool rather than a medium." """"""

"Net News Lethargy"

Features Posted December 21, 2001

Net News Lethargy
"Most sites fail to make use of the medium's main strength – speed"

http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=676

By Amy Langfield, OJR Contributor

"For purposes of this story, the 15 most-trafficked news Web sites were examined on a routine basis during the past three weeks and more closely as breaking news happened. Those top 15 sites were chosen based on Jupiter Media Metrix' September ratings of news sites with the most unique visitors.

They are as follows:
1] CNN.com,
2] MSNBC.com,
3} Time.com,
4} ABCNews.com,
5} NYTimes.com,
6} WashingtonPost.com,
7] USAToday.com,
8] Slate.com,
9] FoxNews.com,
10] LATimes.com,
11] AP.org,
12] Boston.com,
13] Miami.com,
14] USNews.com,
15] WSJ.com.

In addition, several other wildcards were thrown in,
including BBCi, CBS.com, the DrudgeReport, CSMonitor.com, NandoTimes.com and the Guardian."

OOOOOO…………….OOOOOOO