WiredPen

The BBC has announced plans to engage in the Web 2.0 community of consumer-generated content, which he calls a second digital wave.

I believe that this second digital wave will turn out to
be far more disruptive than the first, that it will be fundamentally
disruptive, and that the foundations on which much of traditional media
is built may be swept away entirely…

[It is characterized by all] media – sound, picture, text – available on all devices, all the time.  Searchable, movable, share-able… [and] People will also be able to make and distribute pretty much anything they want to…

For broadcasters, the digital revolution can be summed up in four words:  audiences have a choice.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee takes up the issue of network neutrality at 10 am Wednesday as part of an overhaul of the Telecommunications Act.

The bone of contention: will current internet neutrality go by the
wayside or does it need to be codified? Net neutrality means that
Internet service providers and network owners concern themselves only
with efficiently moving bits — not with the content embodied by the
bits.

I’m with Lessig and Cerf on this one. Full post at About and issue analysis, too.

Just got back from a quick trip to Georgia for annual family weekend. Mike and I played landscapers/gardeners and prepared a rose garden in memory of my mother, who died in January.

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The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case involving Rev. Jerry Falwell’s attempt to shut down  a website, Fallwell.com, run by a New York man opposed to Falwell’s stance on homosexuals. A three-member federal appeals court ruled last year that Fallwell.com "did not create any likelihood of confusion about whether Falwell sponsored it."

Windows Live Academic (WLA) search (beta) is scheduled to go live after midnight, focusing on (not surprisingly) computer science, physics and engineering subjects. The Microsoft tool provides abstract previews via a preview pane, sort
and group by capability, and citation export, according to the website.

WLA contains both freely available and access-restricted content, just like Google Scholar. A key difference between this search and Google Scholar may be authentication. Microsoft has worked with publishers and universities to provide (seamless?) access to subscription content, according to the website. Google is also working with libraries — “offering the option to include a link for their patrons” — to make their tool more useful for students and researchers.

When I tried the service — 2.00 - 2.30 am — it wasn’t yet working (or the servers were being hammered - but in the wee hours of the morning?). I switched from Firefox to MSIE in case the tool didn’t like my browser — but that didn’t help. My search results screen stayed in a perpetual state of “Loading…” Will update later today.

The NY Times (via cNet) has an update on the novel concept being tested by some McDonalds restaurants: using a remote call center to take drive-through orders. The VoIP-based business surfaced in mid-2004 (BrandAutopsy), with followups in early (CommWeb, MSNBC) and mid-2005.

An early headquarters contract with Oak Brook, IL SEI Information Technology (relationship to Verety?) promised “professional order taker[s] with strong communications skills whose job is to do nothing but take down orders.” A Colorado franchise-holder, Steve Bigari, expanded his call center so that it could serve more than his own McDonalds stores. Bronco Communications is featured in the current NYT article — suggesting there are at least three firms providing this service to hamburger chains.

Hardee’s — a regional fast-food chain — began testing remote call centers for order-taking in early 2005, according to the Dallas Morning-News (via the Tennessean). The jury remains out at Wendy’s, according to the NYT.

Is this the modern day equivalent of piece-work?

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Courtesy of one of my COM300 students -> The BBC reports aForrester assertion that the podcast audience is primarily "tech savvy, young males" … "despite the hype surrounding [podcasts]."

Harrumph. We are in still in the early adoption stage of this technology! I’m certain that I could examine popular press reports less than two years after Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP (and, thu, the web) and find equally dismissive headlines/research/forecasts.

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The Center for Media and Democracy just released results of a 10-month study of 77 local television stations and their use of 36 video news releases (VNRs). Sinclair-owned FOX affiliate KOHK-25 in Oklahoma City took "top honors" — it showed six of the VNRs, five of them in their entirety. None cited the source.  Read More.

I don’t like it … "it" being the "new" New York Times. I am NOT a Windows person. I’m not accustomed to nor do I want anything taking up 100% of my screen unless I say so. The NYT has taken that option away, at least on this Windows machine, where my (not very old monitor) says it needs the whole damn thing. :-/

It certainly may be appealing to the high-tech-geek crowd with 21" monitors and the equivalent of 6 point type. My eyes are older than that, thank you very much.

And then … the clutter. The columns! They’ve taken "let’s put everything on the front page" to an entirely new level. Of clutter. Ugh.

I was looking around for the "most blogged" box that’s all the rage. Hmm. It’s halfway down the page - way below the fold. (Pause. I didn’t see the tabs at the top - until I shrunk the window to a manageable (to my eye) width. And they’re above a horizontal "blocker". Ugh. Again.)

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It’s a logical step from pay-per-view …. Monsters&Critics reports that five studios are now allowing movie downloads — some on the same schedule as "home video" (DVD/VHS) release. Check out Movielink and CinemaNow. Cost is comparable to full-price DVD (but at what quality?). More on DRM, etc. later. (Tip: one of my COM300 students today!)

Update, 5 April.Well, they haven’t quite been assimilated. Contrary to the rosy picture painted by the techPubs,there are some serious drawbacks. The biggie? You can only play the thing on your computer — yeah, you can burn a DVD, but current reports are that the format can’t be read by your TV’s DVD player.