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21 Feb 2010 01:43

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Biz: The AP’s using Twitter to link to stories on Facebook. WTF?

  • What they’re doing The AP has been linking to all of their stories on Twitter through their Facebook page, which is something Sarah Palin would do. But the world’s largest news organization?
  • Why it’s smart Because it allows people to easily comment socially on the stories Facebook posts. It centralizes an often-decentralized presence in online media.
  • Why it’s stupid Dudes, you realize that you can easily do something similar on your own site using Facebook Connect and Disqus, right? Then you get to keep all the ad money! source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Feb 2010 22:09

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Biz: Rejoice! The AP’s long absence on Google News has ended

  • 7 weeks without the Associated Press on Google; nobody noticed source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Aug 2009 10:44

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Biz, Tech: AP: Charging for quotes it doesn’t own, going into PR spin mode

  • If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea.
  • Thomas Jefferson • Quoted by blogger James Grimmelmann, who used that handy-dandy quote-charging system to see if Associated Press would charge him to pay for a quote they didn’t even use in a story. Not only did they do it (for $12), they returned his money, then made a statement about it. (He smartly responded back.) Sure, they’re not attacking bloggers. That’s what they say. But we can see the precedent and the crosshairs. It’s just not good for the Internet, guys. Our ban on their content stands. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Aug 2009 21:02

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About: The Associated Press is dead to us. We’re not covering their stories.

  • © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
  • The slogan that runs at the bottom of each Associated Press story • We copied it from the bottom of one of their articles. Why? Because it’s silly in the day and age of the Internet. Of course it’s going to get copied and redistributed, paraphrased and quoted. It’s how information spreads. But not anymore from us. We quit. This was the last straw. You used to be great, AP, but now you’re just a giant beast of another era. Even your efforts to reach younger customers fail. So, we’re no longer linking to your stories on this site. Or, if we absolutely need to (which, considering the wide variety of content online, we don’t need to), we’ll link to you guys using a NoFollow tag. Think we should do this? Let us know. We’re up for any opinion you have on this matter. We simply want the AP to respect the rights of its audience. It’s only fair.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 5 Comments • Permalink

02 Aug 2009 20:21

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Biz, Tech: Dear Associated Press: There’s no way you’re charging this much

  • $12 cost to quote five words from a single article, according to their new iCopyright site source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 6 Comments • Permalink

24 Jul 2009 17:57

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Biz, Politics, Tech: AP’s news wrappers: Our brains just imploded, guys

ap0724
  • Wow, and we thought the Republicans’ health care graphic was bad. Basically, if we’re reading this right: The Associated Press needs to convince its members to agree to put digital wrappers on their content, wrappers that are a) invisible to consumers and b) can be tracked on the Internet. Um, OK. We don’t know if they know something about the ASCII type spec that we don’t, but what they’re describing sounds impossible to do with copy and pasting.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Jun 2009 15:49

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Biz, Offbeat: This handy chart says bologna sales have gone way up

Hey, times are tough, sandwiches are easy to make, and moms everywhere are scared of peanut butter. Can you blame ’em? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

08 Apr 2009 23:52

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Biz, Politics: We’re using this site to protest the Associated Press tomorrow

  • We’re only using AP content tomorrow. Consider it civil disobedience. The Associated Press has made a lot of questionable decisions lately, what with that whole going against bloggers and Google News thing. But the latest takes the cake – they went after a radio station and AP affiliate for embedding a YouTube video on their site. (WTF?) AP put up the embed code on YouTube for people to link. So, as a protest, tomorrow, we’ll only post news from AP sites. We want them to get hits from us because they’re great. We hope the AP understands. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Apr 2009 01:29

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Biz, Politics: Dear Associated Press: You’re not the only game in town

  • The dispute The Associated Press, one of the most-quoted and most-highly-regarded wire services, wants to battle Web sites who use their content – even under commentary and fair use standards – head-on. “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories,” said AP chair Dean Singleton, who we cited directly from an insightful AP article on the topic. source
  • The dispute The Associated Press, one of the most-quoted and most-highly-regarded wire services, wants to battle Web sites who use their content – even under commentary and fair use standards – head-on. “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories,” said AP chair Dean Singleton, who we cited directly from an insightful AP article on the topic.
  • Our suggestion The wire service currently is still debating how to do this, but here’s how we think they should handle it. They should set up a satellite, AP-1, put it into orbit, implant mind chips into their audience and whenever someone even thinks about reading a newspaper article anywhere besides a newspaper, they’ll get a small, corrective electric shock. Sound idiotic, malformed and unrealistic? That’s because it is, just like this stupid idea. source
  • The dispute The Associated Press, one of the most-quoted and most-highly-regarded wire services, wants to battle Web sites who use their content – even under commentary and fair use standards – head-on. “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under some very misguided, unfounded legal theories,” said AP chair Dean Singleton, who we cited directly from an insightful AP article on the topic.
  • Our suggestion The wire service currently is still debating how to do this, but here’s how we think they should handle it. They should set up a satellite, AP-1, put it into orbit, implant mind chips into their audience and whenever someone even thinks about reading a newspaper article anywhere besides a newspaper, they’ll get a small, corrective electric shock. Sound idiotic, malformed and unrealistic? That’s because it is, just like this stupid idea.
  • We’ll just use Reuters If this crazy idea that a bunch of out-of-touch newspaper publishers conjured up gains legs, it’s OK. There are lots of other places to gather content. And to blame this on blogs and Google News, this is beyond unwise; you could speed up the very road to irrelevancy that you’re trying to prevent with a move like this. Only people who don’t understand the Internet would suggest this idea. Good job screwing it up, old guys. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Feb 2009 01:08

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Biz, U.S.: Dear Associated Press: This is a reeeeeallly stupid idea

  • Can I imagine content going behind a pay wall? Absolutely. And, yes, we are in conversations about that.
  • Tom Curley • The short-sighted, probably fat CEO of Associated Press who doesn’t see the big picture and wants to start charging for content. Good God, if the industry is thinking like this, maybe Marc Andreessen is onto something. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
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