Thursday, August 09, 2007



Elton John's war on the Media Dragons Elton John hates this blog

Unlike years past, efforts to overhaul the much beleaguered Freedom of Information Act are gaining real traction on Capitol Hill. Momentum More

Open Government Groups Push FOIA Overhaul
A lawyer and an expert in whistleblower law, Gualtieri founded Federal Accountability for Initiative Reform (FAIR) in 1998

. Many public service scandals have come to light in Canada over the past several years. A few notable examples are:
o The Tainted Blood Scandal, in which 60,000 Canadians were infected with hepatitis C, many of them fatally.
o The Gun Registry Scandal, in which a program with a budget of $2 million spent $1 billion without authorization or reporting of the cost overrun to Parliament.
o The Sponsorship Scandal, in which millions of dollars of public money were diverted illegally to government-favoured advertising agencies.


Why This Subject Is Important to You; [ Gadgets ... ; More Gadgets; New Official Blog on Google Earth and Google Maps ]
• · After 7 uninterrupted years of writing this blog each day, I will be taking a brief vacation - no web, no email, no phone. Returning May 23. Feel free to send me updates so I can catch-up quickly upon my return. All your consideration is appreciated. With my thanks and best wishes Sabrina; A Site to See. In order to ensure that your PC is protected from malware, it helps to run a few tests. Auditmypc.com offers just that: a handful of free, relatively quick self-assessments. Options include testing the strength of your firewall and your protection against pop-ups. Auditmypc.com
• · Mark A. Phillips doesn't at all mince words when taking to task his fellow journalists, not sparing their feelings a bit. He even identifies by name one of the journalistic comrades of whom he is scolding. That being one Debra J. Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle. My suggestion for Saunders and others who believe they know who "real journalists" are: Get over it....The reality is that defining a journalist by the very narrow scope Saunders chooses to use is a symptom of the greater illness that plagues many, what I call "traditional" journalists.. It's called Big Ego ; Pundit Payola
• · · 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." Repeat By Mark A. Phillips ; There's a lot of talk about blogs being wonderful marketing tools lately. In fact, many big businesses are quickly working on plans to launch their own corporate blogs to serve as communication channels for their customers. When it comes to corporate blogging, some companies have stumbled, some have soared and others are facing serious start-up challenges. Case in point? GlaxoSmithKline's new blog for over-the-counter diet drug, Alli. Corporate Blogging - Alli "Oops
• · · · Blog: Friends in high places: As you'd expect, Myspace is still the king of social networking with 114 million unique visitors in June. That equated to growth of 72 per cent in the space of a year. But the Comscore figures also show how quickly Myspace rival Facebook, is catching up. It had 52 million unique visitors in June, up 270 per cent in the last year. Blog: Beautiful potential; ugly getting there ; Web alert: They know nothing about you
̶ ; · · · · Still some value in the old media ; IWR takes you back to basics again, and explains the not-so-dark art of finding out who’s reading your blog and what they’re saying about it. So you have set up and are running a blog, but how do you know if anyone is reading it and who those readers are? Just as importantly, how do you keep track of what others in the blogosphere are saying about your postings? Simple. You get to grips with the small matter of monitoring your blog. And that means understanding three simple principles: site analysis, trackbacks and specialist search engines. Master all three and you will have achieved blog management nirvana. Although Google does not release figures of blog coverage, Technorati is not so shy and currently claims to track in excess of 86 million blog Technorati
• · · · · · I shall assume that it is not the business of an author to respond in detail to the threads that commentators develop, since they clearly have a life of their own. The US intervened in two world wars to save Europe from itself' Blog of all blogs; A new website has taken office stories online, inviting users to provide juicy details of romance be it Russell and Rebecca or other tidbits O'heir's lispy stories or Tadros larry and hardy episodes or even Roussos's ex Stories about losers with plenty of money ;-)