Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O has been center stage in technology world for past few days. The news coming out of the event can be overwhelming. Here are a handful of articles that I find worth of your time and attention. Read more »
Can America’s viral site BuzzFeed succeed in a country where sensationalist journalism already thrives? We’ll soon find out. Read more at paidContent »
Media outlets such as the Guardian take a long time to produce data-backed reports and visualizations, while big data analytics apps move fast but don’t lack a human touch. Is there a happy medium? Read more »
The debate over whether WikiLeaks should be seen as a media entity like the New York Times took on a new urgency this week after the military prosecutor in whistleblower Bradley Manning’s trial said he sees no difference between the two. Read more at paidContent »
Facebook’s Poke app, a copy of red-hot Snapchat rose almost to the top of the iTunes appstore on launch. A few days later it has tanked, making me wonder: can Facebook really invent any new Internet behavior or is it destined to be a copycat forever? Read more »
An editor at the Guardian argues that newspapers should be funded by a tax on internet service providers, because public journalism needs to be supported. But there are a host of flaws with the idea, including the fact that large newspapers are not synonymous with journalism. Read more »
When the British royal family asked UK newspapers not to publish pictures of Prince Harry frolicking nude in Las Vegas, it seemed like a ludicrous request. But even though the media largely complied, the reality of internet life meant the pictures were impossible to suppress. Read more at paidContent »
The controversial world of paywalled academic publishing has been hit by a major shift, with the British government saying it will make open access to scientific research a condition of public funding by 2014. Read more at paidContent »
Beneath the furor over Twitter’s clampdown on its API is the same dilemma that many traditional media companies like the New York Times are also confronting — namely, how much should you be an open platform, and how much should you be a destination? Read more »
The humble text message turned 20 years old this weekend, and other than an excuse for cake, the birthday is a great chance to look at how carriers innovate and why they are getting crushed by over the top services now that times have changed. Read more »
It’s Murdoch week at the Leveson inquiry — hours of viewing pleasure for snarky dart throwers as first James Murdoch and then his father Rupert (Wednesday at 10 a.m. London time), take center stage at the hearings on “the relationship of the press with the public, police and politicians.” Read more at paidContent »
Comments by Sergey Brin that seem to suggest that Facebook and Apple are almost as much of a threat to the open web as China and Saudi Arabia have provoked all sorts of reaction online. Here’s what people are saying about it. Read more »
WikiLeaks is trumpeting its latest release, a cache of millions of internal emails from StratFor, a security-consulting firm with ties to the U.S. government. But the nature of the emails and a partnership with the hacker collective Anonymous raise questions about WikiLeaks’ continued relevance. Read more »
First the news: Yes, the rumors are true. We are indeed buying the assets of ContentNext Media from Guardian News & Media Limited. And no, we are not disclosing the terms of the deal. Here are the reasons why we are acquiring paidContent and its sister sites. Read more »
The Guardian says it’s now going to experiment with allowing readers to help decide what news to cover. The paper announced Monday that it’s going to make its “newslist” public, following the idea that if readers are part of the process, they’ll be more engaged. Read more »
The Guardian’s latest attempt to become a serious player in the American market is gearing up, with the launch of a new homepage for US readers. But after many failed attempts, can it ever succeed – or could its American dream turn into a nightmare? Read more »
The publishing world continues to expand, with high-end group shopping service Gilt Groupe launching its own cooking magazine and the New York Times Library releasing a magazine-style iPad app. As the tools to publish become cheaper and cheaper, brands are becoming publishers in their own right. Read more »
More and more, open source search looks to be a viable alternative for organizing unstructured data in the enterprise. The open source community believes it has advantages in scalability, flexibility and speed over enterprise-specific behemoths like Autonomy and Microsoft. But more importantly the functionality, cost structure ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
USA Today is the latest media company to open up its data via an API, the software interface that makes it easy for developers to use another company’s data in applications. The newspaper joins a group that includes The Guardian, the New York Times and NPR. Read more »
Last year was the worst year since 1986 for newspaper ad revenues (unless you use inflation-adjusted numbers, in which case it was the worst since 1963). Some papers are looking to pay walls as a solution, while others are hoping the Apple iPad will save them. Read more »
