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08 Oct 2009 09:42

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Tech: Here’s a big social media graphic for you kids to chew on

MySpace is dipping big time, Facebook is growing super-fast, and so is Twitter, except Twitter is still closer to the bottom than the top. source

08 Oct 2009 09:36

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Politics: Everyone’s a marketer: Why the FTC’s new blogging rules stink

  • Regulating every last one of us in our tiny, imaginary boardrooms (in my mind, mine is mahogany-paneled and has a Häagen-Dasz fountain) is as ludicrous as not skipping past the advertisements on one’s DVR.
  • TheAwl.com co-founder Choire Sicha • Discussing in the New York Times why the FTC’s blogger marketing disclosure regulations are silly. His argument? We’ve reached a point where everyone is a marketer without even realizing it. Really? We thought it was to keep these guys in check. • source

08 Oct 2009 09:20

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Tech: This talking piano talks better than we do (kinda)

  • Now, if only they could give this piano a brain so that it could talk back to us when we sassed it. “Oh no you di’int” in the key of G. (The Austrians are geniuses, by the way.) source

08 Oct 2009 09:11

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World: The Royal Mail is makes a really good argument for e-mail

The postal service in the U.K. has widespread support for a strike. It’s bad enough that Amazon has a backup plan in case they do strike. source

08 Oct 2009 09:02

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Culture: Robert Joel Halderman: A news chaser being chased himself

  • Colleagues are shocked by his arrest in the Letterman case. Halderman, a producer of “48 Hours,” covered wars and school shootings with a high level of get-the-story passion. But now that he’s on the other end, colleagues are shocked. Marcy McGinnis, a former boss of his at CBS, described “Joe” as a newshound who would do anything to get the story. “I said to my mother that this was like her waking up to find out I’d been arrested for this,” she noted. Halderman’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, said that co-workers of his posted his bond, and that he was trying to “level the playing field” for his client. source

08 Oct 2009 08:45

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Biz: Rupert Murdoch: An old guy who wants to screw over new media?

  • Murdoch, at 78, doesn’t, practically speaking, have the time to see the online world into maturity—nor the intellectual interest to want to be part of the effort. Rather, his strategic effort may more logically be to slow it down.
  • Vanity Fair columnist and Newser co-founder Michael Wolff • Discussing Rupert Murdoch’s stance on online media and forcing consumers to pay for the news. Wolff suggests that Murdoch is old and probably isn’t thinking long-term about the industry at the moment, but short-term at his bank account. Murdoch owns enough of the media industry that people would notice if he started charging for some of it. • source

08 Oct 2009 08:32

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Culture: A “landscape of the dispossessed”: Herta Müller’s Nobel Prize win

The German novelist, essayist and poet, born in Romania, is the 12th female winner of the most literary Nobel Prize. source
 

08 Oct 2009 08:19

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Tech: Have a “real job”? You may have to take your Twitter pic in a suit

  • 70% of businesses will require dress codes for avatars by 2013 source