journal

Facebook adding third-party integration

The Wall Street Journal has a scoopy story about Facebook's forthcoming announcement on Thursday. The report says Facebook will be opening itself up for other companies to add their wares in the form of branded pages and services made available to Facebook users on different networks.

Previously, Facebook's strategy for adding this content was in the form of specialty groups, which Facebook members had to join in order to access or gain benefit from. According to the WSJ, these services will now be integrated as standalone portions of the service and will be available without leaving the social … Read more

Murdoch promises 'journalistic integrity' at The Wall Street Journal

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp. and owner of the tabloids The Sun in England and the New York Post, is promising to retain the journalistic integrity of The Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones if he succeeds in acquiring them for $5 billion.

In a letter sent over the weekend to members of the Bancroft family that owns the company, Murdoch asked to meet with the family and company officials. He assured them that he is "first and foremost" a "newspaper man." "I have also always respected the independence and … Read more

Andrew Keen, the Web's Darth Vader?

LOS ANGELES--Web 2.0 has no clothes, according to Andrew Keen.

The author of the upcoming book, The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our Economy, Keen is emerging as the one of the chief critics of new media.

Speaking on a panel at the OnHollywood conference here on Thursday, Keen stirred passions by attacking MySpace, YouTube, citizen journalism, the wisdom of crowds and the opinions of teenagers.

"MySpace is creating cultural narcissism in our young," Keen told the audience. "Teenage kids don't have much to say." … Read more

Citizen journalism takes a step forward with Topix.com

Topix, a news aggregation service that's been around for several years, launched a new site today, at Topix.com (previously the site was Topix.net). The service continues to pull local news from a variety of local sources, but with today's release, citizen editors can have a much stronger hand in the site.

On the new Topix.com, users apply for the job of editor for a topic or a community and once approved (as with Citizendium, it's not automatic), they can add stories, move stories around on the page, and remove the stories that the Topix &… Read more

News Roundup: Google Video ads, AT&T IPTV, MySpace Mexico, Netscape 9.0

-- Google expands video ad test. Not to be confused with ads placed in user-generated videos on Google Video and YouTube, these video ads from Google will be embedded videos on the page that users must click on to begin. Google is now partnering with content providers such as The Wall Street Journal and Epicurious.com to bring Adsense video ads. (CNET News.com)

-- AT&T to ramp up IPTV rollouts. While Joost and Babelgum have made some noise among the blogs, the prospect of watching IPTV programming on an actual TV is coming closer to being a … Read more

Reuters offers tech to trust citizen journos' photos

News organization Reuters is working with photo editing powerhouse Adobe and camera maker Canon so changes to digital photos can be detected, Reuters CEO Tom Glocer said on his blog last week.

Reuters, the news agency whose image was tarnished earlier this year when a freelance photographer provided doctored photos of bombing in Beirut, wants to ensure such changes can be found.

"I am pleased to announce today that we are working with Adobe and Canon to create a solution that enables photo editors to view an audit trail of changes to a digital image, which is permanently embedded … Read more

How many iPods are iLemons?

The Apple iPod is, far and away, the most popular MP3 player on the market--less a product and more a way of life for many people. But just how reliable a product is it? That's the question posed by Nick Wingfield's article in today's Wall Street Journal. "When iPods Die" (which, like most WSJ content, is locked behind the paper's subscriber firewall) compiles some compelling iPod war stories. Among the frustrated 'Pod users chronicled is Tom Westrup of Austin, Texas, who--after suffering from repeated freeze-ups during playback--is currently awaiting his fifth replacement iPod. There'… Read more