The BlogHer/Compass Partners 2008 Social Media Study - Women and Social Media.

"Blogging has become a mainstream method of communication

• 36.2 Million women participate in the blogosphere weekly
  
• 15.1 Million women are publishing at least one post weekly
  
• 21.1 Million women are reading and/or posting comments to blogs
  weekly"

Science 2.0 - Is Open Access Science the Future? Is posting raw results online, for all to see, a great tool or a great risk? By M. Mitchell Waldrop: "Science 2.0 generally refers to new practices of scientists who post raw experimental results, nascent theories, claims of discovery and draft papers on the Web for others to see and comment on. Proponents say these "open access" practices make scientific progress more collaborative and therefore more productive. Critics say scientists who put preliminary findings online risk having others copy or exploit the work to gain credit or even patents. Despite pros and cons, Science 2.0 sites are beginning to proliferate; one notable example is the OpenWetWare project started by biological engi­neers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

• Public Library of Science On-Line Edition
  
• 3 Quarks Daily, "where a group of bloggers write about science and culture"
  
• OpenWetWare project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  
• UsefulChem - "This is an open source science project wiki in chemistry led by the Bradley Laboratory at Drexel University."

"This project is an ongoing commitment by Universal McCann to measure consumer usage, attitudes and interests in adopting social media platforms and is the largest exploration of its kind. It aims to provide the facts behind the hype...This report (Wave 3) surveyed 17,000 internet users in 29 countries and was completed in March 2008.

Power to the people, Social Media Tracker, Wave 3.0, March 2008 - Wave 3 Highlights:

Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development. If you are online you are using social media

• Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region
  
• All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves
  
  Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3
  
  • 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content
    
  • 55% of users have uploaded photos
    
  • 22% of users have uploaded videos
  
  
• Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media
  
• 73% have read a blog
  
• The blogsphere is becoming increasingly participatory, now 184m bloggers world-wide
  
• China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers, more than the US and Western Europe combined."

News release: "...we're releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. (You can see this...announcement on the Google blog and on the YouTube blog...) This tool will help anyone who uploads videos to YouTube better understand and serve their audiences. For example, users might use Insight to tailor upload strategies to increase their videos' view counts and improve their popularity on the site. And partners who increase their videos' popularity also increase the number of monetizable views their videos get, and as a result, generate more revenue."

Workshop 8 – Monitoring & Current Awareness: Mining Blogs & RSS for Research, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Sunday April 6, 2008 - Sabrina I. Pacifici, Law Librarian, Founder/Editor/Publisher, LLRX.com and Author, beSpacific.com.

"The new AIDS.gov home page provides easier access to site information and offers new features." Prominently displayed at the top right side of the page are links to: a well designed and organized Blog, Podcasts to which users may listen and for which transcripts are provided, RSS Feeds to the podcasts, resource announcements and alerts. Also included are AIDS/HIV related feeds from other e-gov sites. All around, this is a tremendous step forward in e-gov design, with improved site navigation, useful and accessible content and thoughtful implementation of current applications.

"Reporters Without Borders calls on Internet users to come and protest in virtual versions of countries that are Internet enemies...There are 15 countries in this year’s Reporters Without Borders list of “Internet Enemies” - Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. There were only 13 in 2007. The two new additions to the traditional censors are both to be found in sub-Saharan Africa: Zimbabwe and Ethiopia...There is also a supplementary list of 11 “countries under watch.” They are Bahrain, Eritrea, Gambia, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Yemen."

"Tail Report has launched with the goal to map out how money is made in the blogosphere. Tail Report works by asking users to anonymously submit information about their site's traffic, rank and monthly revenue. In return, the user receives a custom report detailing what other websites are making and how their revenue compares based a number of factors, such as traffic, rank, number of RSS subscribers, age, number of employees, content, and ad networks."

US Air Force shoots down blogs, airmen frustrated, by Ryan Paul: "The United States Air Force has stirred up controversy with a new Internet filtering policy that aims to prevent Air Force personnel from reading blogs while on the job. The ban has been implemented by the Air Force Network Operations Center (AFNOC), which houses the Air Force Cyber Command. The block is said to extend to virtually every web site that contains the word "blog" in the address, but doesn't impede access to sites that are deemed by AFNOC to be "reputable media outlet[s]".

"This blog is sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process."

"Environmental Capital provides daily news and analysis of the business of the environment. It tracks how growing green concern, particularly over climate change, is roiling established industries and spurring new ones – and how that shift is affecting investors, consumers and the planet." [Note: does not require a subscription]

Top 60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites, By Charles Babcock, Thomas Claburn, John Foley, W. David Gardner, Antone Gonsalves, Nicholas J. Hoover, K.C. Jones, Elena Malykhina, Richard Martin, Paul McDougall, Marianne McGee, Chris Murphy, Cora Nucci, Art Wittman, and Serdar Yegulalp, InformationWeek, January 26, 2008

Press release: "W3C...published an early draft of HTML 5, a major revision of the markup language for the Web. The HTML Working Group is creating HTML 5 to be the open, royalty-free specification for rich Web content and Web applications. The group operates entirely in public with nearly five hundred participants, including representatives from W3C Members ACCESS, AOL, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, and Opera."

"Citizens can now track fundraising for over 1,500 congressional candidates with free widgets for blogs, social networking pages, and personal web sites. MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan watchdog group, released today customizable widgets – portable chunks of code that allow content to be displayed on any web page – that make political fundraising more transparent. Bloggers and reporters will be able to easily share the campaign finance data for any number of congressional races with their audiences." [Peggy Garvin]

"A survey of U.S. journalists by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicom Group suggests that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting. The survey is part of an ongoing research project by Brodeur in conjunction with Marketwire to dissect and understand the impact that social media and blogs are having on traditional news delivery. The online survey was conducted among a random sample of North American reporters and editors, and was focused on understanding how social media and blogs influence their work."

Scientific American: Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies could usher in a new era of science. Or not. By M. Mitchell Waldrop: "The explosively growing World Wide Web has rapidly transformed retailing, publishing, personal communication and much more. Innovations such as e-commerce, blogging, downloading and open-source software have forced old-line institutions to adopt whole new ways of thinking, working and doing business. Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers--and not just the younger ones--have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open blogs, wikis and social networks of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based "Science 2.0" is not only more collegial than the traditional variety, but considerably more productive."

"TechPresident presents our 2007 Campaign Web Index, a year-end study of which campaigns are best at using the various elements of the web. For the survey we've tapped the very brightest minds working in tech and politics, who happen to be our own bloggers and other friends (some respondents have asked to remain anonymous). Check out their votes and opinions for who's best at online video, advertising, social networking, rapid response, and much more. Some of their responses may surprise you, and some may be entirely predictable."

Editor and Publisher: "Yet it remains something newspapers are embracing as the 2008 presidential campaign hits its stride and the primaries loom. Campaign blogs were once left to partisans and non-journalists; now, along with the L.A. Times, at least five other daily papers have assigned to political blogs full-time reporters who post and edit items almost daily. Dozens of other newspapers have reporters posting regularly, on a part-time basis."

Via Wired: Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From Original Blogger Jorn Barger: "Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom coined the term "weblog" Dec. 17, 1997 -- 10 years ago Monday -- to describe the daily list of links that "logged" his travels across the web. In the decade hence, Barger feels that he's gained some wisdom of his own about blogging. Here's Barger's top 10 tips for novice bloggers..."

Acceptance Speech, Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature 2007, December 7, 2007: "...We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc."

The University of Arizona Artificial Intelligence Lab Dark Web project: "Based on our actual spidering experience over the past 5 years, we believe there are about 50,000 sites of extremist and terrorist content as of 2007, including: web sites, forums, blogs, social networking sites, video sites, and virtual world sites (e.g., Second Life). The largest increase in 2006-2007 is in various new Web 2.0 sites (forums, videos, blogs, virtual world, etc.) in different languages (i.e., for home-grown groups, particularly in Europe). We have found significant terrorism content in more than 15 languages...We believe our Dark Web collection is the largest open-source extremist and terrorist collection in the academic world."

"The Internet is becoming increasingly embedded in everyday life. Drawing on an expanding array of intelligent web services and applications, a growing number of people are creating, distributing and exploiting user-created content (UCC) and being part of the wider participative web. This study describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in worldwide communication, and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are the new value chains and business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts? What are the associated challenges? Is there a government role, and what form could it take?"

Press release: "Eritrea has replaced North Korea in last place in an index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world that is published today by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running...Outside Europe - in which the top 14 countries are located - no region of the world has been spared censorship or violence towards journalists. Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea), five are African (Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea), four are in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran), three are former Soviet republics (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and one is in the Americas (Cuba)."

"On Tuesday, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Sunlight Foundation launched a new collaborative, citizen-driven project on Congresspedia to build profiles on the hundreds of challengers for congressional seats, which will compliment the existing profiles on every member of Congress. The project is non-partisan and, in true open-source fashion, is free for anyone to participate - even the candidates themselves...We've started with nearly 300 basic profiles of candidates that 2008RaceTracker has identified as definitely running. We've also created a series of state-based portals that list all the candidates from each state and all the local blogs we could find that cover Congress at least occasionally - while Congresspedia is limited to confirmed facts, we're a big believer in the blogosphere and want to direct as many citizens as possible to the blogs written by the folks that know the candidates best - the locals."

"Welcome to the State Department's first-ever blog, Dipnote...With the launch of Dipnote, we are hoping to start a dialogue with the public. More than ever, world events affect our daily lives--what we see and hear, what we do, and how we work. I hope Dipnote will provide you with a window into the work of the people responsible for our foreign policy, and will give you a chance to be active participants in a community focused on some of the great issues of our world today." [Posted by Sean McCormack]

Related news:

Congress and the Internet: Highlights, August 29, 2007 (24 pages, PDF), by Walter J. Oleszek. "Today, every lawmaker is an "electronic legislator" to one degree or another because the major functions of Congress - representation, lawmaking, and oversight - are all affected by technology..." [via OpentheGovernment.org]

Press release: "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today publication of two important tools to organize and synchronize national efforts to strengthen preparedness: (1) the National Preparedness Guidelines, which establish a vision for national preparedness and provide a systematic approach for prioritizing preparedness efforts across the Nation; and (2) the Target Capabilities List, which describes the collective national capabilities required to prevent, protect against, respond to and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters and other emergencies."

Press release: "The Federal Election Commission announced today that it has unanimously resolved two complaints alleging that Internet blog activity is subject to Commission regulation, finding that the activity is exempt from regulation under the media or volunteer exemption. In Matter Under Review (MUR) 5928, the Commission determined that Kos Media, L.L.C., which operates the website DailyKos, did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Commission rejected allegations that the site should be regulated as a political committee because it charges a fee to place advertising on its website and it provides “a gift of free advertising and candidate media services” by posting blog entries that support candidates. The Commission determined that the website falls squarely within the media exemption and is therefore not subject to federal regulation under the Act...In MUR 5853, the Commission rejected allegations that Michael L. Grace made unreported expenditures when he leased space on a computer server to create a “blog” which advocated the defeat of Representative Mary Bono in the November 2006 election. The Commission also rejected allegations that Grace coordinated these expenditures with Bono’s opponent in the race, David Roth, and found that no in-kind contributions to Roth’s campaign resulted from Grace’s blogging activity. The Commission also found that the respondent did not fraudulently misrepresent himself in violation of 2 U.S.C. § 441h."

"LibWorm Beta is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries. LibWorm collects updates from about 1400 RSS feeds (and growing). The contents of these feeds are then available for searching, and search results can themselves be output as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his/her favourite aggregator or in LibWorm's built-in aggregator...Each feed searched by LibWorm has been assigned a category, so when you browse by Feed Category, you're seeing all the content from the feeds that have been assigned to that category. Subjects are pre-built searches, usually of greater complexity than the user interface currently supports, for common subjects of interest to libraryfolk." This site is free.

"MedWorm is a medical RSS feed provider as well as a search engine built on data collected from RSS feeds...MedWorm collects updates from over 4000 authoritative data sources (growing each day) via RSS feeds. From the data collected, MedWorm provides new outgoing RSS feeds on various medical categories that you can subscribe to, via the free MedWorm online service, or another RSS reader of your choice, such as Bloglines, Newsgator, Google Reader or FeedDemon." Users may construct free text key word searches, or search for an exact phrase, and may further specify inclusion of content from the following areas: news, consumer, journals, organizations, info and blogs. This service is free.

Press release: "One of the latest reports from Javelin Strategy & Research shows why financial institutions must engage in blogging now, and provides specific steps for assessing this powerful new brand-building and customer-connection capability into 2008-10 strategic plans. According to the study of over 3,500 consumers, one in five online consumers read blogs, yet blogs are offered by less than 1% of financial institutions. Result: banks are largely losing control of discussion about themselves in the ‘blogosphere’. Old-line bankers will find that none of the long-standing customer interaction rules apply to blogging, yet the new capability offers crucial, low-cost marketing benefits available through no other method."

The Guardian: "Thousands of rare books and manuscripts in Iraq's national library and archive, one of the country's most important cultural institutions, are in peril after the occupation of the building by Iraqi security forces, the library's director said yesterday."

"I would like to announce the launch of the Texas Digital Library's (TDL) blog, The Scholar's Space, featuring a team of four contributors (including me), with more to come over the next few months. The Scholar's Space joins scholarly communications blogs sponsored by friends at other colleges and universities, and national and international organizations. We'll be providing commentary on newsworthy items related to TDL participants' local and global interests in academic processes and systems of research -- from providing access to data and information, to online collaboration and new approaches to reporting out results and public archiving of papers and data." [Georgia Harper, Scholarly Communications Advisor, University of Texas at Austin Libraries]

TechnoLawyer BlawgWorld 2007: "BlawgWorld 2007 is the best way to explore and discover legal blogs (blawgs). It features 77 remarkable essays from 77 of the most influential blawgs. Each blogger handpicked their best essay of the year for inclusion in the eBook. The 2007 TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide is a revolutionary new way to find Solutions to Problems your law firm is experiencing. Specifically, it contains 185 Problems and corresponding Solutions. Each Problem is written in the form of a question from the point of view of a law firm and organized by topic. Topics include case management, depositions, discovery, document management, legal research, time-billing, and many more — 58 topics in all." (366 pages, PDF)

Posted on July 19, 2007, By Erin Teeling in Newspaper Study, Bivings, Research (TBG): "We have recently completed the 2007 study of America’s top 100 newspaper websites, entitled American Newspapers and the Internet; Threat or Opportunity? As the newspaper industry continues to suffer declines in readership and circulation, using the Internet to expand a newspaper’s reach is becoming more and more important. While many industry experts fear that the Internet will spell the end of newspapers as we know them, our team here at TBG feels that the Internet presents newspapers with a unique opportunity to make up for lost circulation and readership. This study explores these concepts, as well as the difficulties facing newspapers regarding online advertising, shrinking staffs, and reaching out to consumers...research data is available in Excel format here."

"Open-source politics is the idea that social networking and participatory technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns. Forget party bosses in smoky backrooms—netroots evangelists and web consultants predict a wave of popular democracy as fundraisers meet on MySpace, YouTubers crank out attack ads, bloggers do oppo research, and cell-phone-activated flash mobs hold miniconventions in Second Life..." [Table of Contents for this issue]

The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0, David C. Wyld, Associate Professor Southeastern Louisiana University (99 pages, PDF)

WashingtonPost.com: "Over the past six years, Cheney has shaped his times as no vice president has before. This...four-part series...explores his methods and impact, drawing on interviews with more than 200 men and women who worked for, with or in opposition to Cheney's office. Many of those interviewed recounted events that have not been made public until now, sharing notes,e-mails, personal calendars and other records of their interaction with Cheney and his senior staff. The vice president declined to be interviewed."

Donald Tapscott's White Paper: Winning With The Enterprise 2.0, "addresses the advantages and challenges of implementing E2 technologies." (62 pages, PDF)

Via USA.gov, find active and archived blogs from U.S. federal agencies. Currently linking to 10 active sites, including Library of Congress Blog, Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog, and Health Marketing Musings.

Source: "Privacy International (PI) is a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance by governments and corporations. PI is based in London, and has an office in Washington, D.C. Together with members in 40 countries, PI has conducted campaigns throughout the world on issues ranging from wiretapping and national security activities, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police information systems, and medical privacy, and works with a wide range of parliamentary and inter-governmental organisations such as the European Parliament, the House of Lords and UNESCO."

PandemicFlu.gov: "On June 13, Secretary Michael O. Leavitt, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is convening a Leadership Forum in Washington, DC on pandemic preparedness. This interactive forum will bring together highly influential leaders from the business, faith, civic and health care sectors to participate in dynamic discussions to help Americans become more prepared for a possible influenza pandemic. In order to extend the value of this one-day conference, the Department of Health and Human Services is also hosting a blog summit on preparing for a pandemic. This five-week online event, beginning on May 22, is part of an ongoing effort by the Department to help Americans become more prepared for a pandemic. The blog summit provides an opportunity to have an open conversation and shape the thinking about how to communicate the critical need for preparedness at home and within workplaces and communities."

Press release: "LexisNexis, a leading provider of information and services solutions, today announced the results of a nationwide survey to provide insights into how Information Professionals (IPs) are adding value to their organizations through technology and knowledge management...The survey revealed an interesting breakdown and frequency of information sources accessed...nearly four in ten access Weblogs at least weekly (39%), and more than a third access wikis (34%)...More than nine in ten surveyed access news Web sites (92%), and company Web sites (93%) at least weekly (or more often). Video or audio podcasts were rarely accessed. Less than two in ten access video podcasts (16%), or audio podcasts (15%)."

WSJ free feature, At Some Schools, Facebook Evolves From Time Waster to Academic Study: "After years of worrying about how much time freshmen spend on Facebook, schools are incorporating the study of social networking, online communities and user-contributed content into new curricula on social computing. The moves, like other academic expansions into fields like videogame design, are part of an effort to keep technology studies relevant to students' lives – and to tap subjects with entrepreneurial momentum. Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are among the tech companies that have invested in schools' social computing programs."

Technorati Blog: "We've streamlined a blogsearch-only homepage at search.technorati.com (an easy shortcut is s.technorati.com ...With this launch, we also provide you with more context around more stuff like videos, music, and blogs. Over time, these pages will become richer and more comprehensive as we add more information about the thing itself, like where it was published, who links to it, what other things are similarly tagged, and more...We currently track over 250 million videos, blogs, photos, podcasts, events, and other social media objects in addition to more than 80 million blogs..."

Social Isolation and American Workers: Employee Blogging and Legal Reform, by Rafael Gely and Leonard Bierman, Harvard Journal of Law and Technology (JOLT), Volume 20, Number 2, Spring 2007.

After 5 uninterrupted years of writing this blog each day, I will be taking a brief vacation - no web, no email, no phone. Returning May 22.

A new world unfolding - Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Earth & Maps

I created and launched LLRX.com in 1996 and have always strived to maintain a site dedicated to sharing best practices on a range of research and technology related issues relevant to legal professionals. Keeping these goals in mind, launching the newly designed LLRX.com, which premiered with the April 2007 issue, was an endeavor over one year in the making, involving alot of discussion, review, design, redesign, testing, and tweaking...some of which is still underway. To my friends who indulged repeated refrains of, "but does this look better than this," thank you. And a very special thanks to Darlene Fichter, whose genius has been an inspiration which helped me bring my site to where it is today.

The other part of this journey is thanks to the terrific team at Justia - Tim and Stacy, Danilo, Nick, et al. - who provided the programming expertise to compliment my research, publishing and usability experience. Converting a decade of content coded by 'yours truly' was a challenge in and of itself, but we also crafted a new site design, navigation structure and search features.

We preserved the best of the old site, such as the Court Rules Forms and Dockets database, while grounding the new site in an open source content management system, Drupal, providing enhanced layout, navigation and usability, and offering more options to access the depth of source materials that are hallmarks of the site. This is accomplished via drop down menus that appear on the top navigation bar, topical navigation choices that consistently appear on the far right hand side of each page, and by employing the new Google Custom Search so that readers may query for content on LLRX, LLRX and beSpacific [my blog on law and technology news, updated daily], or for results from the legal web. Also, a "printer friendly" option has been added to make it easier to read articles once you have printed them.

Authors may submit an article directly to me any time, so I will take the opportunity now to invite authors, new and returning, to contribute their expertise, via presentations, guides, articles, and columns, to the LLRX global community numbering over 120,000 readers each month. Thank you for participating in this community, and I look forward to hearing from you. Best --- Sabrina.

Press release: "The bill provides a privilege in federal court proceedings for reporters to refrain from revealing their confidential sources of information. The privilege is similar in nature to that currently offered by 32 states and the District of Columbia. The ability to assure confidentiality to people who provide information is essential to effective news gathering and reporting on highly sensitive and important issues. Typically, the best information about corruption in government or misdeeds in a private organization will come from someone on the inside who feels a responsibility to bring the information to light. But that person has a lot to lose if his or her identity becomes known. In many cases, the person responsible for the corruption or the misdeeds can punish the source through dismissal or more subtle forms of punitive action if the source’s identity becomes known. And so it is only by assuring anonymity to the source that a reporter can gain access to the information in order to bring it to public scrutiny."

Wired reports the "U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer...The new rules (PDF) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update."

Press release: "Three-fourths of the nation's largest newspapers now offer blogs on business-related topics, according to a study released today by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University. These popular online Web journals written by reporters get breaking news to readers more quickly, according to 60 percent of the business bloggers who responded to the study. However, more than half of respondents also said this also takes away from their regular reporting time."

New national study from Tufts University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service: Civic Engagement Among Young Men and Women. "The new fact sheet shows how young men and women perform on the 19 measures of civic engagement. Utilizing data from the 2006 Civic and Political Health of the Nation Survey, and several other sources, we provide new information on the civic engagement of youth, confidence in government, and following public affairs and the news, by gender. Generally we find that young men are among the most engaged in a wide range of political activities despite lower voter turnout rates, and young women are among the most engaged in civic activities such as volunteering, and also the most likely to vote."

David Sifry's annual State of the Blogosphere report: "Technorati is now tracking over 70 million weblogs, and we're seeing about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day. That's about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day." Archive of reports dating back to October 2004 are linked here.

Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design:

"This is the online participation website for the meeting [Lisbon meeting for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN) is being held between 26-30 March 2007]. Available here will be: a rundown of each meeting complete with full details, including panellists; topics for discussions; links to resources and presentations; and links to webcasts and audiocasts where available. At the same time, blogs, chatrooms, polls and forums will help people both at the meeting and dotted around the globe to share information and interact with one another."

"The fourth edition of the Project's Annual State of the News Media report released March 12. This year, the report includes a unique topographical analysis of journalism Web sites. The report also reveals changes ahead for the blogosphere, cable news, and in the ambitions of news organizations generally."

Who's a Journalist These Days? "Journalists with the "Big Ego disease" often point at bloggers and other people without press passes and accuse them of not being "real journalists." But bloggers who provide analysis about newsworthy events are journalists." By Mark A. Phillips

From the transcript of the President's Radio Address, released March 2, 2007: "As we work to improve conditions at Walter Reed, we're also taking steps to find out whether similar problems have occurred at other military and veterans hospitals. So I'm announcing that my Administration is creating a bipartisan Presidential Commission to conduct a comprehensive review of the care America is providing our wounded servicemen and women. This review will examine their treatment from the time they leave the battlefield through their return to civilian life as veterans, so we can ensure that we are meeting their physical and mental health needs. In the coming days, I will announce the members of this commission, and set a firm deadline for them to report back to me with their recommendations."

Related news and upcoming hearings:

"OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress. Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists know what's really going on in Congress. Now, everyone can be an insider. OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation."

"The Tyndall Report monitors the weekday nightly newscasts of the three American broadcast television networks: ABC World News with Charles Gibson, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams...The Tyndall Blog monitors and comments on each night's newscasts and links to the stories that the networks aired."

Legal Times - free article - You Read It Here First? What's new about blogs covering trials is also old. What's daring is often dicey. by James McGrath Morris, Legal Times, February 26, 2007.

WSJ free feature today: Candidates Find A New Stump In the Blogosphere: "Candidates of both parties are already buying space on search engines, blogs and other Internet sites popular with political junkies and potential donors. With 18 candidates vying for the most open race for the White House in 80 years and front-runners on both sides announcing plans to forgo public financing, the 2008 election promises to be a huge revenue opportunity, not just for TV broadcasters."

Pew Internet & American Life Project press release: "A December 2006 survey has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content."

Understanding the Political Influence of Blogs: A Study of the Growing Importance of the Blogosphere in the U.S. Congress, April 2006, by T. Neil Sroka.

"Today OJR welcomes Nora Paul of the University of Minnesota and Laura Ruel of the University of North Carolina as contributing writers on the site. Each month, Nora and Laura will examine current research on news website user interfaces and storytelling techniques. Their articles will help news site producers and editors pick the best ways to package their information to increase their site's traffic and influence."

Maryland Courts Watcher Blog "posts the synopses of all published opinions issued by the Court of Appeals and Court of Special Appeals of Maryland and synopses of all opinions that are openly available on the Internet from other courts in Maryland."

The majority of the site remains subscription only, but today's launch, which is accompanied by an free online Reader's Guide (8 pages, PDF) detailing all the changes, includes the following free access additions: a new, highly interactive and content rich Market Data Center, a new blog, The Wealth Report ("Robert Frank looks at the lives and culture of the wealthy"), and continued access to the currently established daily Free Features.

Hoover's blog, Bizmology, was launched back in late July 2006, and has occasional but interesting business news postings.

Hitwise reports that Google Blog Search "the market share of visits to Google Blog Search surpassed visits to Technorati for the week ending 12/23/06."

The December 2006 issue of ABA's Law Practice Magazine features a profile of Sabrina I. Pacifici, founder, editor, publisher of LLRX.com and author of beSpacific. After a decade of publishing the free webzine on law and technology resources, and with more than four years and 11,000 postings on beSpacific.com, I am delighted to continue my active participation in such a expert profession, both here and abroad, which values innovation, creativity, contribution and community. Thank you for all your support, and I look forward to publishing your articles in 2007.

WSJ free feature: Blogs for Shoppers, From Fashion to Food, Sites, Track Deals and Offer Ideas For Stumped Gift Givers

"...for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you." [Link]

Press release: "The Federal Election Commission announced today that it has reached settlements with three 527 organizations accused of violating the federal campaign finance laws during the 2004 presidential election. The League of Conservation Voters 527 and 527II, MoveOn.org Voter Fund, and Swiftboat Veterans and POWs for Truth have collectively paid almost $630,000 to settle charges that they failed to register and file disclosure reports as federal political committees, and accepted contributions in violation of federal limits and source prohibitions. The Commission approved all three conciliation agreements by a vote of 6-0."

Press release: Among the predicitions, is the following - "Blogging and community contributors will peak in the first half of 2007. Given the trend in the average life span of a blogger and the current growth rate of blogs, there are already more than 200 million ex-bloggers. Consequently, the peak number of bloggers will be around 100 million at some point in the first half of 2007."

With a wide range of content formats, from podcasts to RSS and searchable databases, the OYEZ blog is a unique and content richs online resource to locate cases, information on the justices, Listen to or download the official version of recent oral arguments, and read court related news.

Election Night 2006 An Evening in the Life of the American Media, November 27, 2006 - by the Project for Excellence in Journalism: "For the blogosphere, a fairly smooth election night made things something of a disappointment. For top newspaper Web sites, finding the balance between speed and offering a rich narrative still has to be reconciled. For television, slow results and a lack of prepared material tilted coverage toward chatter, especially for the cable networks. Perhaps the destinations best suited to Election Night 2006 were the Web sites of TV news operations, plus one aggregator. They offered a combination of quick access to results plus the ability of users—largely through access to exit poll data or Associated Press material—to plumb a wealth of statistical information on their own. These conclusions—plus five lessons about the media—are among the findings of a widespread review of media outlets on Election Night 2006." [Note that this report profiles only 6 blogs - not a balanced or comprehensive approach in the context of the vast resources available to the broadcast news sites as well as newspaper sites.]

The complete November 2006 issue is available at www.llrx.com

There are 15 new articles in total, so please visit the homepage for links to and abstracts of all this month's content. Many thanks to all the authors, and have a safe and happy holiday.

Chicago Tribune: Lawyers face right to blog - "Online journals that contain legal discussions and background information are challenging traditional practices on attorney advertising."

U.S. News reports on a range of new programs sponsored by DHS that leverage innovative technology applications (wikis and blogs) and educational programs to expand and improve the effectiveness of homeland security goals and objectives.

Via Official Google Blog: "...the new Blog Alert, which notifies you about new blog search results. We've also added a Comprehensive Alert, which can show results from multiple sources (including Google News, the web, and blogs) so you get fuller information whenever your favorite topics appear online."

Press release: "Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released tips for bloggers who want the inside story on government agencies. The Bloggers' FAQ on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) outlines how to use open government laws to get access to records kept by federal agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA)...The guide walks bloggers through making a FOIA request -- addressing what to ask for, which government offices must
comply, and what you can and cannot obtain through FOIA. It also explains how to put requests on the fast track and get processing fees waived."

"One Day in History is a one off opportunity for you to join in a mass blog for the national record. We want as many people as possible to record a 'blog' diary which will be stored by the British Library as a historical record of our national life. You can enter your diary of the 17 October until 31 October." The Times Online reported that as of October 22, 2006 there were more than 35,000 blog diary received, with a goal of 50,000. According to Ivo Dawnay, Communications Director, The National Trust, this project is envisioned "as a vast digital collage of a dynamic society in an age of great uncertainty and change: an invaluable resource for historians one hundred, even three hundred years hence."

The Boston Herald reported on new policies that have been implemented to monitor and limit the content of military blogs published by personnel in Iraq, in the interests of operational security.

Business Week: Europe's Politicians Embrace Web 2.0 - "Seeking new ways to engage with voters, European politicians have taken to blogging and podcasting to get their messages out."

Institute for Policy, Democracy and the Internet: The Audience for Political Blogs: New Research on Blog Readership, by Joseph Graf, October 20, 2006. (14 pages, PDF)

Press Release, October 18, 2006: "Microsoft Corp. today released to the public Windows® Internet Explorer® 7 for Windows XP, the latest version of the world’s most popular Web browser. Customers can upgrade and browse the Web with confidence knowing that the new browser provides a greater level of security, makes everyday tasks easier, and works well with the Web sites they visit."

Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation, Public DRAFT September 21, 2006, R. David Lankes, Joanne Silverstein. Produced for the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy. Information Institute of Syracuse. Syracuse University’s school of Information Studies.

Press release: "The Federal Trade Commission is hosting a blog to provide information and a forum for feedback about its public hearings on "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade," to be held November 6-8, 2006, in Washington, DC. The public hearings will examine how evolving technology will shape and change the habits, opportunities and challenges of consumers and businesses in the coming decade, and will feature experts from the business, government and technology sectors, consumer advocates, academicians, and law enforcement officials."

Excerpt of letter sent by Sun Microystems, Inc. CEO Jonathan Schwartz to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, on October 2, 2006:

"This is a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have business blogs, defined as: active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products." [Simone Yu]

"Nine Legislative Efforts that Must Be Stopped in 2006 - As Congress mounts its final push before the midterm elections, a number of bills that threaten the bedrock of Internet privacy and civil liberties could either come up for votes or worm their way into larger legislative packages that end up being rushed into law. The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) compiled the Internet Watch List so that lawmakers, journalists and Internet activists can keep close tabs on the dangerous legislative efforts that cannot be allowed to succeed in the so-called "silly season" at the end of the 109th Congress."

Jack M. Balkin, Online Legal Scholarship: The Medium and the Message, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 20 (2006). "...blogging by legal experts has intervened in the debate in a new way, helping to inform not only the public but also the mainstream media and key players about complicated issues."

3 Must-Use Online Tools for Journalists, Amy Gahran's handout [HTML and PDF] from the annual conference of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). [via Center for Media and Democracy]

Mary Whisner, A Blog's Life, 98 Law Libr. J. 559 (2006).

Google Webmaster Central: "Welcome to your one-stop shop for comprehensive info about how Google crawls and indexes websites. You can learn here how to ensure that your site is easily crawled and indexed and access tools that will enable you to diagnose crawling issues, study statistics on how your site is doing in our index, and tell us how you'd like your site to be crawled and indexed."

See also:

"Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lead a consortium researching advanced information analysis and computational technologies to protect the nation. The university's Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) will head a consortium that will focus on finding patterns and relationships in data, such as news stories, open-source Web logs, and other accessible information, to quickly identify emerging indicators of possible terrorist activity, and rate the consi