We’ve finally reached the point at which some of the finest minds doing the biggest thinking about the battered news business believe the best eraser for red ink is… charity. Financial pros David Swensen, the chief investment officer at Yale, and his colleague Michael Schmidt posit that the best way to save journalism is to go the nonprofit route, funded by endowments. But is it?
As President Obama’s motorcade rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, federal authorities deployed a closely held law enforcement tool: equipment that can jam cellphones and other wireless devices to foil remote-controlled bombs, sources said.
You might be familiar with phishing attacks, those messages sent by criminals that look like they’re from a bank or Nigerian prince. But what about Twishing?
The term may enter the tech lexicon this week, thanks to an attack targeting the Web site Twitter, which runs a popular service that lets people share short updates about what they’re doing.
“Dude, this place is quiet,” says one avatar, a rather generic-looking 20-something guy, as we lurk on one side of the Home central plaza, watching virtual people go by on what appears, on my television screen, to be a sunny day in a modern town center. “This could get boring fast,” texts another in agreement, a speech balloon popping up over his head.
In a First Amendment case with implications for everything from neighborhood email lists to national newspapers, an Eastern Shore businessman argued to Maryland’s highest court yesterday that the host of an online forum should be forced to reveal the identities of people who posted allegedly defamatory comments.
John Arispe cruised slowly along in his car, one eye on the road, one eye on a glowing blue dot on a digital map of the Springfield Mall neighborhood in Northern Virginia, displayed on the screen of his sleek new Apple iPhone 3G. As he moved north on Frontier Drive, the dot moved with him.
Why is Google making more money everyday while newspapers are making less? I’m going to pick on the Washington Post again only because it’s my local paper and this is a local example.
There were severe storms in the Washington area today, and the power went out in our Reston, Va., office. I wanted to find some information about the status of power outages to see whether we should go into the office tomorrow. Here’s what I found on the homepage of WashingtonPost.com:
For believers in the power of rigorous local coverage to help save newspapers, the Washington Post’s launch of LoudounExtra.com last July was a potentially industry-defining event. It paired a journalistic powerhouse with a dream team of Internet geeks to build a virtual town square for one of Virginia’s and the nation’s most-affluent and fastest-growing counties.
I don’t know why, but when I saw a post about the New York Times–known for decades as The Gray Lady–working on releasing an open API, I couldn’t help but picture an elderly woman in an evening gown trying to breakdance. That aside, however, I think it’s great that the Times is going to set its data free. Epeus Epigone says it would be better if the paper adopted open standards rather than just releasing an API, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing.
The best program managers are “freewheeling zealots” with big ideas. The staff has been called “100 geniuses connected by a travel agent.” And the boss describes his agency as a home for “radical innovation.” It’s DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a dinner for 1,700 alumni, friends and partners Thursday night in Washington.
The technology business has a reputation for innovation, but three things have stayed constant for years: The computing world revolved around Microsoft, your wireless carrier controlled what your cellphone could do, and the record labels locked your legal music downloads with software to limit what you could do with them.
All three of those constants started to crumble in 2007.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do: Read more »
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
