Create Web Site - World-of-Newave.info http://answers.world-of-newave.info/create-web-site.htm Latest news and articles about Create Web Site en-us Copyright (c)2004-2008.§/Newave SARL. All rights reserved. webmaster@world-of-newave.com (Webmaster) Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:35:12 GMT Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:35:12 GMT Newave Lisa XML Engine v1.0 - http://www.world-of-newave.info/about.htm 60 http://www.world-of-newave.info/images/wi8831.gif World-of-Newave.info - Knowledge and Informational Database http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 88 31 {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Crowdsourcing Book Excerpt: The Canary in the Coal Mine http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/crowdsourcing-book-excerpt-the-canary-in-the-coal-20080913513.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/crowdsourcing-book-excerpt-the-canary-in-the-coal-20080913513.htm Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:00:00 GMT First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, "crowdsourcing" describes the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of the specialized few. Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise -- it's talented, creative and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. It's a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education and job history no longer matter, where the quality of work is all that counts and every field is open to people of every imaginable background. If you can perform the service, design the product or solve the problem, you've got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent employed, research conducted and products made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable. When the original article was published, crowdsourcing still constituted a nascent business model. A few small companies had achieved limited successes with it, and large companies had only begun to test the waters. In this excerpt, Howe argues that in just two years crowdsourcing has revolutionized an entire industry -- stock photography -- and may well be poised to create disruption in other fields as well. - - - Adapted from Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, by Jeff Howe. More at Howe's Crowdsourcing Blog. Chapter 7: The Canary in the Coal Mine There's a story people like to tell about Bruce Livingstone. In late 2005, Getty Images, the world's largest photo agency, was looking to acquire Livingstone's company, iStockphoto, the world's most successful crowdsourcing company. Long before the contracts were drawn up, Livingstone, to show his commitment to the deal, tattooed the word "Getty" in cursive across the tender flesh on his inner wrist. Then he e-mailed Getty CEO Jonathan Klein photos of the tattoo under the message: "Don't make me write another word after this!" It's just the kind of tale -- emblematic of determination and just the right amount of quirky eccentricity -- that tends to burnish the reputation of its subject. In Livingstone's case, it has the added benefit of being demonstrably true. With his penchant for muscle cars, rockabilly haircuts and, yes, tattoos, it's tempting to call Livingstone an unlikely CEO. But I prefer to think of Livingstone as a perfectly reasonable chief for some corporation from, say, the year 2020. A company not unlike iStockphoto. Located in a single, cavernous room inside a former factory in downtown Calgary (Alberta, Canada), iStockphoto houses a tiny fraction of its actual workforce. And Livingstone, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, occupies a desk -- chosen, it would seem, at random -- in the middle of the floor. The corner office clearly loses significance in a company that thrives on decentralization. Jeff Howe explains crowdsourcing, which activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. Video: Courtesy of Jeff Howe Westeel Rosco built the factory in 1925 to manufacture nails, screws and other bits of hardware. Unlike Westeel Rosco, iStock's products -- stock photos, illustrations and videos -- aren't manufactured on-site. They're created by a global, fluid workforce of 60,000 part-time photographers and artists, only a fraction of whom make a living from the work they sell on iStock. Yet they have a devotion to the company matched by few traditional firms. The full-time staffers who spend their days in the old Westeel Rosco plant play a support role for the community -- and community is the only applicable word -- that is making the product iStock brings to market every day. And that community has been very, very good to Livingstone and his investors. In the course of several years iStock has grown from a hobby to the third-largest purveyor of stock images in the world. When Getty purchased iStock in early 2006, Livingstone took home more than half of the $50 million Getty paid for the company. The first stock photo agency was founded in 1920, and for most of the 20th century the industry was an afterthought, trafficking in the outtakes from commercial magazine assignments. Very few photographers tried to make a living off the market in preexisting images alone. This changed after the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-1980s led to a rapid growth in the publishing industry, and to a commensurate demand for images. Suddenly photographers were making six figures a year selling photos they'd already been paid to shoot. It was like minting money. Stock photography is, in relative terms, a tiny industry. The annual global gross for the entire business is estimated to be around $2 billion, which makes it a bit bigger than the market for gift baskets, but a little smaller than the annual sales of orchids. But this little industry has undergone big changes, and could well be a case study in how the crowd will impact much larger businesses. In just the last few years the influx of talented amateurs armed with inexpensive, high-resolution digital cameras has upended the economics of stock photography. Five years ago, a professional-quality image was still a scarce resource. No more. This isn't to say the market for high-end photographs has disappeared. A gifted photographer will always find work. But the professional no longer has a lock on the middle and lower ends of the stock photo business. With a modicum of training, just about anyone can take a decent shot. Sophisticated cameras and photo-editing software do the rest. iStock exploits this fact. Design firms and other small companies working on a budget quickly embraced what became known as the "microstock" model. One graphic designer told me he went from paying hundreds of dollars an image to less than $10. "I pass on some of the savings to my clients and keep the rest. We're both delighted." iStock might be great for buyers, but it's caused all sorts of headaches for professional stock photographers. In my original Wired article about crowdsourcing I quoted a Los Angeles-based photographer, Mark Harmel, saying that this influx of cheap images had caused a slight decline in his income from stock photo sales, which had dropped to $60,000. But in the two years since that decline has fallen off a cliff, to $35,000 in 2007. "If I look at the trend line, it just keeps going down. I'm really concentrating on getting assignments now," says Harmel. "I recently came back from London with 70 really wonderful shots. I'll probably use them on my website, but it's not worth my time to bother submitting them to a stock agency. They won't sell." Harmel's far from alone. In fact, Getty's other businesses have struggled in the crowdsourced era. In the year I spent writing this book the company's stock slid 60 percent, falling to just under $22 by February 2008. That month Getty was acquired by the private equity firm Hellman Friedman for $2.4 billion, a considerably lower figure than the company had originally sought. According to a report released at the time of the sale, Goldman Sachs estimates that Getty's core business -- the sale of rights-managed, professionally produced images -- will continue to suffer an irreversible decline, falling to just 29 percent of its revenues by 2012. In the same period the investment bank projects iStock to continue its rapid rate of growth. iStock sold $72 million worth of images in 2007, a figure expected to jump to $262 million by 2012. In this light, paying $50 million for a crowdsourced photo company looks like the smartest decision Getty ever made. The company is in the midst of transforming its business, from one reliant exclusively on professionals to one that is at least equally reliant on amateurs. As the Goliath of the industry, where Getty goes its competitors are sure to follow, which is to say, stock photography itself has been utterly transformed through crowdsourcing, in which a once-scarce commodity has become abundant. The question to ask is whether the upheaval roiling stock photography is only a leading indicator, like the minor volcanic eruptions that can precede a catastrophic earthquake. Already the trend is migrating to other fields. Most immediately, the same dynamics that made the stock photo ubiquitous -- affordable digital SLR cameras and burgeoning communities of enthusiastic amateurs -- are affecting other markets for visual images. So-called "citizen paparazzi" use cellphone cameras to snap impromptu shots of stars and then sell them to new photo agencies such as Scoopt, which specialize in buying up and marketing their work. Amateurs can beat professional paparazzi for the simple reason that they vastly outnumber them. It's a question of probability: The throng of pedestrians in Greenwich Village, for instance, have a much better chance of catching an unkempt Gwyneth Paltrow than a single paparazzo. And photography may well be just the beginning. iStock itself is doing a burgeoning business in the sale of stock video footage, and the crowd is also making commercials, collaborating on TV scripts, and recording and distributing their own music. They're writing political analysis, creating their own video games, and making feature-length movies. For the time being, all this activity has taken place in something of a parallel universe, without causing any of the economic upheaval visited on the stock photo or pornography industries. But those universes are beginning to collide as more companies attempt to package all this outpouring of creativity into a marketable product. While crowdsourcing has already emerged as a potent force in the media and entertainment industries, it's also profoundly influenced the way even Fortune 100 companies like Procter & Gamble do business. Once famous for its insular culture, Procter & Gamble now crowdsources much of its R&D process, using global networks of scientists such as InnoCentive and NineSigma, which boast a combined membership of 2 million professional and amateur researchers. Even companies operating in a conventional field such as mining have found crowdsourcing applications. The Canadian gold-mining group Goldcorp put geological survey data online and offered a $575,000 prize to anyone who could identify likely areas for exploration. Goldcorp says the contest produced 110 targets that yielded $3 billion in gold. Following its lead, the mining giant Barrick Gold Corporation recently offered $10 million to anyone who could improve its silver-extraction process. The open call of crowdsourcing is also being used by companies such as Google (to develop applications for its Android mobile platform) and Netflix (to improve its recommendation system). The question is whether the iStock secret sauce can be applied to industries like television and journalism and, possibly, even beyond to any business that traffics in bits and bytes. To answer that question, it helps to know what's in the secret sauce. The Community Is the Company iStock has been compared to a cult, and the analogy isn't entirely unfair. It's no accident that the most successful companies in the web's second coming -- most of whom traffic in the crowd's creative output -- are led by outsize personalities. "Bruce is to iStock what Tom is to MySpace," notes Garth Johnson, iStock's VP of Business Development. (Johnson resigned his position after this book went to press.) For those readers over the age of 30, Tom is Tom Anderson, the president of the social networking behemoth MySpace and the first "friend" to greet any new user. Under this new archetype of a company -- in which the community, as much as the customer, comes first -- the cult of personality plays a crucial role in community building, and Livingstone has been as essential to the growth of the iStock community as Anderson has been to MySpace's. "Bruce has a really strong, extremely charismatic personality online," says Johnson. "And that's really helped us build the community." It's safe to say that iStock has left the community-building phase behind: Sixty-thousand people have combined to create an enormous portfolio of over 3.5 million images and 100,000 videos. By contrast, Getty's other divisions combined only use 2,500 photographers. The iStockers offer the company their artwork, and in return iStock goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the iStockers happy. The site offers the budding photographer all manner of free tutorials, and the forums buzz -- at a rate of 38 posts per minute -- with questions about lens sizes, polarized filters and F-stop settings. iStock doesn't offer a chance to get rich. It offers the chance to make friends and become a better photographer. "We don't own anything, the community does" says Johnson. "Everything we do affects these people, whether they're just earning enough to pay for their equipment, or they're making mortgage payments from their photo sales. They all want a voice, and we have to give it to them, because really, the community is the company." The upside to this state of affairs should be obvious -- a dedicated, efficient workforce with no expectation of receiving a living wage -- but there are downsides as well: Even the smallest changes can roil the fickle, passionate community of iStockers. In March 2006, iStock launched a new feature on its web forums, a "forometer" which measured an iStocker's popularity through "bafflingly complex scientific methods" including the date and number of posts to the forum. The forometer displayed its results through a set of red, yellow or green bars. It did not go over well. The community questioned the principles behind the feature, as well as its functionality. Not long after its launch, the feature had been removed. Employees may be hell on overhead, but they're paid to accept all but the most draconian policies with a polite nod. Communities, on the other hand, aren't paid to stick around, and nothing stops them from selling their photos to one of iStock's many competitors. "They don't work for us," Livingstone laughs. "We work for them." If the iStocker feels a sense of ownership over the site, that's understandable: The iStock community predates iStock the company. Livingstone didn't set out to revolutionize an industry, he just wanted to fill a personal need and help a few friends at the same time. In 2000 Livingstone was running a small graphic design and web-hosting firm in Calgary. Bruce is an avid photographer himself, and over the years he had developed an extensive network of photographers and designers. Early in the year he took 2,000 of his images and put them online. Anyone could download his photos in exchange for giving him an e-mail address. Livingstone's friends decided they wanted to share their images with the public, too. That June the budding community instituted a credit system: A user could download one image for every image of theirs that had been downloaded by someone else. It was a classic example of the gift economy, the non-monetary exchange that grew up alongside the internet. During iStock's early years, everyone took something and gave something in turn. "The feeders and the eaters were the same people," as Livingstone puts it. Everyone profited by acquiring new images, though no one made (or spent) a dime. Soon friends of friends heard about Bruce's nifty idea and started uploading their images, too. Then around 2002 a wider public got wind of iStock, and the site began to hit critical mass. Soon Livingstone was paying $10,000 a month for the bandwidth to support it. He could have taken advertising to cover the cost of hosting, but he felt that would violate the spirit of the site. "The focus was on the community, and good design. Advertising would have cluttered the site," says Livingstone. Instead, he started charging a quarter for each image, and he opened the system up to the public. This proved to be a momentous decision. Word quickly spread among publishers that there was a site offering cheap, usable images, and photographers began flocking to iStock to upload their portfolios. Traffic to the site skyrocketed, and soon Livingstone raised the price to $1 per image. "I thought it might become a sideline business," he says. It quickly became much more than that. The quality of the images wasn't always as high (or as consistent) as a traditional stock agency's, but the differences were indiscernible to the general consumer, and after all, you couldn't beat the price. By 2004 a host of other so-called "micro-stocks" had sprung up with strategies similar to iStock's. The professionals panicked. Microstock photos, they charged, were flooding the market with subpar images. At first, the industry aligned itself against iStockphoto and other microstock agencies such as ShutterStock and Dreamstime. Then in early 2006, Getty announced it would buy iStockphoto for $50 million. "If someone's going to cannibalize your business, better it be one of your other businesses," Getty CEO Jonathan Klein told me shortly after the sale. Smaller magazines, nonprofit organizations, and all manner of websites have continued to flock to iStock's high-volume, low-cost model. As of February 2008, iStockphoto had 2 million regular customers purchasing photographs, video footage, illustrations and animations. "Bruce's brilliance," Jonathan Klein once told me, "is that he turned community into commerce." Livingstone uses a slightly different formulation: "I turned commerce into community," iStockphoto has perfected the Jedi Mind Trick that's at the heart of crowdsourcing. It's an incredibly cost-effective strategy -- iStock boasts a 55 percent profit margin. And yet, Livingstone stumbled into this business model by creating a context -- a community of like-minded enthusiasts -- in which financial measures take a backseat to considerably less tangible concerns. Ask someone in the office, and they'll tell you: It's not about the money. Ask an iStocker and they'll tell you the same thing. In fact -- would-be crowdsources take note: If it is about the money, it won't work. It will fizzle, not sizzle, as one of iStock's designers put it. "What's funny is, the money people, they pretty quickly get pulled aside in the forums by the core people. Or they just don't have a voice. People will ignore them, like 'Oh, that's just so and so, they're just here to make money.'" That doesn't mean the iStockers are unmotivated by self-interest. The more a photographer's images are downloaded, the more recognition they receive in the community, and the more credits they earn to download other people's photos to use in their own designs. And the additional income is also welcome, of course. Unlike other cases in which large corporations have attempted to monetize community, iStock does reward its contributors. It paid out $21 million in 2007. It's significant that people in online communities like iStock's react with great hostility to the idea that crowdsourcing is a form of cheap labor -- despite the fact it demonstrably is. After all, no one wants to feel exploited. In the end, what iStock provides is an invaluable if impossible-to-measure currency: meaning. The crowd will give away their time -- their excess capacity -- enthusiastically, but not for free. It has to be a meaningful exchange. Wired.Com Crowdsourcing Book Excerpt: The Canary in the Coal Mine {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, "crowdsourcing" describes the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of the specialized few. Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise -- it's talented, creative and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. It's a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education and job history no longer matter, where the quality of work is all that counts and every field is open to people of every imaginable background. If you can perform the service, design the product or solve the problem, you've got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent employed, research conducted and products made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable. When the original article was published, crowdsourcing still constituted a nascent business model. A few small companies had achieved limited successes with it, and large companies had only begun to test the waters. In this excerpt, Howe argues that in just two years crowdsourcing has revolutionized an entire industry -- stock photography -- and may well be poised to create disruption in other fields as well. - - - Adapted from Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, by Jeff Howe. More at Howe's Crowdsourcing Blog. Chapter 7: The Canary in the Coal Mine There's a story people like to tell about Bruce Livingstone. In late 2005, Getty Images, the world's largest photo agency, was looking to acquire Livingstone's company, iStockphoto, the world's most successful crowdsourcing company. Long before the contracts were drawn up, Livingstone, to show his commitment to the deal, tattooed the word "Getty" in cursive across the tender flesh on his inner wrist. Then he e-mailed Getty CEO Jonathan Klein photos of the tattoo under the message: "Don't make me write another word after this!" It's just the kind of tale -- emblematic of determination and just the right amount of quirky eccentricity -- that tends to burnish the reputation of its subject. In Livingstone's case, it has the added benefit of being demonstrably true. With his penchant for muscle cars, rockabilly haircuts and, yes, tattoos, it's tempting to call Livingstone an unlikely CEO. But I prefer to think of Livingstone as a perfectly reasonable chief for some corporation from, say, the year 2020. A company not unlike iStockphoto. Located in a single, cavernous room inside a former factory in downtown Calgary (Alberta, Canada), iStockphoto houses a tiny fraction of its actual workforce. And Livingstone, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, occupies a desk -- chosen, it would seem, at random -- in the middle of the floor. The corner office clearly loses significance in a company that thrives on decentralization. Jeff Howe explains crowdsourcing, which activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. Video: Courtesy of Jeff Howe Westeel Rosco built the factory in 1925 to manufacture nails, screws and other bits of hardware. Unlike Westeel Rosco, iStock's products -- stock photos, illustrations and videos -- aren't manufactured on-site. They're created by a global, fluid workforce of 60,000 part-time photographers and artists, only a fraction of whom make a living from the work they sell on iStock. Yet they have a devotion to the company matched by few traditional firms. The full-time staffers who spend their days in the old Westeel Rosco plant play a support role for the community -- and community is the only applicable word -- that is making the product iStock brings to market every day. And that community has been very, very good to Livingstone and his investors. In the course of several years iStock has grown from a hobby to the third-largest purveyor of stock images in the world. When Getty purchased iStock in early 2006, Livingstone took home more than half of the $50 million Getty paid for the company. The first stock photo agency was founded in 1920, and for most of the 20th century the industry was an afterthought, trafficking in the outtakes from commercial magazine assignments. Very few photographers tried to make a living off the market in preexisting images alone. This changed after the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-1980s led to a rapid growth in the publishing industry, and to a commensurate demand for images. Suddenly photographers were making six figures a year selling photos they'd already been paid to shoot. It was like minting money. Stock photography is, in relative terms, a tiny industry. The annual global gross for the entire business is estimated to be around $2 billion, which makes it a bit bigger than the market for gift baskets, but a little smaller than the annual sales of orchids. But this little industry has undergone big changes, and could well be a case study in how the crowd will impact much larger businesses. In just the last few years the influx of talented amateurs armed with inexpensive, high-resolution digital cameras has upended the economics of stock photography. Five years ago, a professional-quality image was still a scarce resource. No more. This isn't to say the market for high-end photographs has disappeared. A gifted photographer will always find work. But the professional no longer has a lock on the middle and lower ends of the stock photo business. With a modicum of training, just about anyone can take a decent shot. Sophisticated cameras and photo-editing software do the rest. iStock exploits this fact. Design firms and other small companies working on a budget quickly embraced what became known as the "microstock" model. One graphic designer told me he went from paying hundreds of dollars an image to less than $10. "I pass on some of the savings to my clients and keep the rest. We're both delighted." iStock might be great for buyers, but it's caused all sorts of headaches for professional stock photographers. In my original Wired article about crowdsourcing I quoted a Los Angeles-based photographer, Mark Harmel, saying that this influx of cheap images had caused a slight decline in his income from stock photo sales, which had dropped to $60,000. But in the two years since that decline has fallen off a cliff, to $35,000 in 2007. "If I look at the trend line, it just keeps going down. I'm really concentrating on getting assignments now," says Harmel. "I recently came back from London with 70 really wonderful shots. I'll probably use them on my website, but it's not worth my time to bother submitting them to a stock agency. They won't sell." Harmel's far from alone. In fact, Getty's other businesses have struggled in the crowdsourced era. In the year I spent writing this book the company's stock slid 60 percent, falling to just under $22 by February 2008. That month Getty was acquired by the private equity firm Hellman Friedman for $2.4 billion, a considerably lower figure than the company had originally sought. According to a report released at the time of the sale, Goldman Sachs estimates that Getty's core business -- the sale of rights-managed, professionally produced images -- will continue to suffer an irreversible decline, falling to just 29 percent of its revenues by 2012. In the same period the investment bank projects iStock to continue its rapid rate of growth. iStock sold $72 million worth of images in 2007, a figure expected to jump to $262 million by 2012. In this light, paying $50 million for a crowdsourced photo company looks like the smartest decision Getty ever made. The company is in the midst of transforming its business, from one reliant exclusively on professionals to one that is at least equally reliant on amateurs. As the Goliath of the industry, where Getty goes its competitors are sure to follow, which is to say, stock photography itself has been utterly transformed through crowdsourcing, in which a once-scarce commodity has become abundant. The question to ask is whether the upheaval roiling stock photography is only a leading indicator, like the minor volcanic eruptions that can precede a catastrophic earthquake. Already the trend is migrating to other fields. Most immediately, the same dynamics that made the stock photo ubiquitous -- affordable digital SLR cameras and burgeoning communities of enthusiastic amateurs -- are affecting other markets for visual images. So-called "citizen paparazzi" use cellphone cameras to snap impromptu shots of stars and then sell them to new photo agencies such as Scoopt, which specialize in buying up and marketing their work. Amateurs can beat professional paparazzi for the simple reason that they vastly outnumber them. It's a question of probability: The throng of pedestrians in Greenwich Village, for instance, have a much better chance of catching an unkempt Gwyneth Paltrow than a single paparazzo. And photography may well be just the beginning. iStock itself is doing a burgeoning business in the sale of stock video footage, and the crowd is also making commercials, collaborating on TV scripts, and recording and distributing their own music. They're writing political analysis, creating their own video games, and making feature-length movies. For the time being, all this activity has taken place in something of a parallel universe, without causing any of the economic upheaval visited on the stock photo or pornography industries. But those universes are beginning to collide as more companies attempt to package all this outpouring of creativity into a marketable product. While crowdsourcing has already emerged as a potent force in the media and entertainment industries, it's also profoundly influenced the way even Fortune 100 companies like Procter & Gamble do business. Once famous for its insular culture, Procter & Gamble now crowdsources much of its R&D process, using global networks of scientists such as InnoCentive and NineSigma, which boast a combined membership of 2 million professional and amateur researchers. Even companies operating in a conventional field such as mining have found crowdsourcing applications. The Canadian gold-mining group Goldcorp put geological survey data online and offered a $575,000 prize to anyone who could identify likely areas for exploration. Goldcorp says the contest produced 110 targets that yielded $3 billion in gold. Following its lead, the mining giant Barrick Gold Corporation recently offered $10 million to anyone who could improve its silver-extraction process. The open call of crowdsourcing is also being used by companies such as Google (to develop applications for its Android mobile platform) and Netflix (to improve its recommendation system). The question is whether the iStock secret sauce can be applied to industries like television and journalism and, possibly, even beyond to any business that traffics in bits and bytes. To answer that question, it helps to know what's in the secret sauce. The Community Is the Company iStock has been compared to a cult, and the analogy isn't entirely unfair. It's no accident that the most successful companies in the web's second coming -- most of whom traffic in the crowd's creative output -- are led by outsize personalities. "Bruce is to iStock what Tom is to MySpace," notes Garth Johnson, iStock's VP of Business Development. (Johnson resigned his position after this book went to press.) For those readers over the age of 30, Tom is Tom Anderson, the president of the social networking behemoth MySpace and the first "friend" to greet any new user. Under this new archetype of a company -- in which the community, as much as the customer, comes first -- the cult of personality plays a crucial role in community building, and Livingstone has been as essential to the growth of the iStock community as Anderson has been to MySpace's. "Bruce has a really strong, extremely charismatic personality online," says Johnson. "And that's really helped us build the community." It's safe to say that iStock has left the community-building phase behind: Sixty-thousand people have combined to create an enormous portfolio of over 3.5 million images and 100,000 videos. By contrast, Getty's other divisions combined only use 2,500 photographers. The iStockers offer the company their artwork, and in return iStock goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the iStockers happy. The site offers the budding photographer all manner of free tutorials, and the forums buzz -- at a rate of 38 posts per minute -- with questions about lens sizes, polarized filters and F-stop settings. iStock doesn't offer a chance to get rich. It offers the chance to make friends and become a better photographer. "We don't own anything, the community does" says Johnson. "Everything we do affects these people, whether they're just earning enough to pay for their equipment, or they're making mortgage payments from their photo sales. They all want a voice, and we have to give it to them, because really, the community is the company." The upside to this state of affairs should be obvious -- a dedicated, efficient workforce with no expectation of receiving a living wage -- but there are downsides as well: Even the smallest changes can roil the fickle, passionate community of iStockers. In March 2006, iStock launched a new feature on its web forums, a "forometer" which measured an iStocker's popularity through "bafflingly complex scientific methods" including the date and number of posts to the forum. The forometer displayed its results through a set of red, yellow or green bars. It did not go over well. The community questioned the principles behind the feature, as well as its functionality. Not long after its launch, the feature had been removed. Employees may be hell on overhead, but they're paid to accept all but the most draconian policies with a polite nod. Communities, on the other hand, aren't paid to stick around, and nothing stops them from selling their photos to one of iStock's many competitors. "They don't work for us," Livingstone laughs. "We work for them." If the iStocker feels a sense of ownership over the site, that's understandable: The iStock community predates iStock the company. Livingstone didn't set out to revolutionize an industry, he just wanted to fill a personal need and help a few friends at the same time. In 2000 Livingstone was running a small graphic design and web-hosting firm in Calgary. Bruce is an avid photographer himself, and over the years he had developed an extensive network of photographers and designers. Early in the year he took 2,000 of his images and put them online. Anyone could download his photos in exchange for giving him an e-mail address. Livingstone's friends decided they wanted to share their images with the public, too. That June the budding community instituted a credit system: A user could download one image for every image of theirs that had been downloaded by someone else. It was a classic example of the gift economy, the non-monetary exchange that grew up alongside the internet. During iStock's early years, everyone took something and gave something in turn. "The feeders and the eaters were the same people," as Livingstone puts it. Everyone profited by acquiring new images, though no one made (or spent) a dime. Soon friends of friends heard about Bruce's nifty idea and started uploading their images, too. Then around 2002 a wider public got wind of iStock, and the site began to hit critical mass. Soon Livingstone was paying $10,000 a month for the bandwidth to support it. He could have taken advertising to cover the cost of hosting, but he felt that would violate the spirit of the site. "The focus was on the community, and good design. Advertising would have cluttered the site," says Livingstone. Instead, he started charging a quarter for each image, and he opened the system up to the public. This proved to be a momentous decision. Word quickly spread among publishers that there was a site offering cheap, usable images, and photographers began flocking to iStock to upload their portfolios. Traffic to the site skyrocketed, and soon Livingstone raised the price to $1 per image. "I thought it might become a sideline business," he says. It quickly became much more than that. The quality of the images wasn't always as high (or as consistent) as a traditional stock agency's, but the differences were indiscernible to the general consumer, and after all, you couldn't beat the price. By 2004 a host of other so-called "micro-stocks" had sprung up with strategies similar to iStock's. The professionals panicked. Microstock photos, they charged, were flooding the market with subpar images. At first, the industry aligned itself against iStockphoto and other microstock agencies such as ShutterStock and Dreamstime. Then in early 2006, Getty announced it would buy iStockphoto for $50 million. "If someone's going to cannibalize your business, better it be one of your other businesses," Getty CEO Jonathan Klein told me shortly after the sale. Smaller magazines, nonprofit organizations, and all manner of websites have continued to flock to iStock's high-volume, low-cost model. As of February 2008, iStockphoto had 2 million regular customers purchasing photographs, video footage, illustrations and animations. "Bruce's brilliance," Jonathan Klein once told me, "is that he turned community into commerce." Livingstone uses a slightly different formulation: "I turned commerce into community," iStockphoto has perfected the Jedi Mind Trick that's at the heart of crowdsourcing. It's an incredibly cost-effective strategy -- iStock boasts a 55 percent profit margin. And yet, Livingstone stumbled into this business model by creating a context -- a community of like-minded enthusiasts -- in which financial measures take a backseat to considerably less tangible concerns. Ask someone in the office, and they'll tell you: It's not about the money. Ask an iStocker and they'll tell you the same thing. In fact -- would-be crowdsources take note: If it is about the money, it won't work. It will fizzle, not sizzle, as one of iStock's designers put it. "What's funny is, the money people, they pretty quickly get pulled aside in the forums by the core people. Or they just don't have a voice. People will ignore them, like 'Oh, that's just so and so, they're just here to make money.'" That doesn't mean the iStockers are unmotivated by self-interest. The more a photographer's images are downloaded, the more recognition they receive in the community, and the more credits they earn to download other people's photos to use in their own designs. And the additional income is also welcome, of course. Unlike other cases in which large corporations have attempted to monetize community, iStock does reward its contributors. It paid out $21 million in 2007. It's significant that people in online communities like iStock's react with great hostility to the idea that crowdsourcing is a form of cheap labor -- despite the fact it demonstrably is. After all, no one wants to feel exploited. In the end, what iStock provides is an invaluable if impossible-to-measure currency: meaning. The crowd will give away their time -- their excess capacity -- enthusiastically, but not for free. It has to be a meaningful exchange.
In this excerpt from the new book {...}
Published: September 5, 2008, 10:00 pm - Indexed: September 8, 2008, 11:26 am - Page Size: 49KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {INTERNET > GOOGLE} - Introducing Picasa 3.0 (and big changes for Picasa Web Albums) http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/introducing-picasa-3-0-and-big-changes-for-picasa-2008097435.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/introducing-picasa-3-0-and-big-changes-for-picasa-2008097435.htm Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:22:29 GMT A little over two years ago, we launched Picasa Web Albums to make publishing photos online easy. Now Picasa Web Albums hosts billions of online photos from around the globe, with users adding millions of new snapshots every day. Each of these photos records a different moment, or a different perspective, but one thing they all have in common is that in each case, the person behind the camera wanted to share their experience with a friend, their extended family, or maybe the world.Today, we're rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others.For starters, there's a brand-new feature called "name tags" in Picasa Web Albums that helps you quickly label all the people in your photos, so you can organize and share your photos based on who's in the picture. Name tags uses advanced technology to automatically group similar faces together. That way, you can quickly label all the people you care about in your photo collection. Once you've labeled your photos, it's then a snap to do things like create a slideshow with every picture of you and your best friend, or easily share party photos with everybody who appears in that photo album. This demo video shows you what you can do with name tags: There's more to Picasa Web Albums. The site now has a fresh, clean look that makes photos look great, and a new "Explore" page that allows you to browse some of the most interesting public content on our site, including "Recent Photos," a near-real-time view of public photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums. You can now also email photos directly to Picasa Web Albums.Of course, Picasa Web Albums is only half the story. The great advantage of Picasa Web Albums has always been its integration with Picasa, Google's free photo management software for your PC. And today we're making public the beta version of Picasa 3 at picasa.google.com.Sharing photos with Picasa has always been remarkably simple, but in Picasa 3, we've made sharing so simple you don't even have to lift a finger. A new 'sync to web' button allows you to sync specified albums on your PC to the web. If you edit or add photos to the album on your PC, those changes will be automatically reflected on Picasa Web Albums. You can even specify who you'd like to share your web albums with from the Picasa software itself.We've packed many other new features into Picasa 3. There's a slew of powerful new editing tools to retouch and restore photos, automatically detect and fix red-eye, or attractively add text to your images. Plus, there's plenty of the fun stuff -- we completely overhauled things like photo collages and slideshows, giving you more creative freedom over composition and layout. Not to mention a brand-new movie maker that can blend photos, video, webcam capture, and music to create customized movies that you can easily share on YouTube.You can learn more about Picasa 3 and the new Picasa Web Albums on the Google Photos blog, or by watching the overview video below. Please give both a try -- and give us feedback!Posted by Mike Horowitz, Product Manager Googleblog.Blogspot.Com Introducing Picasa 3.0 (and big changes for Picasa Web Albums) {new window}   Googleblog.Blogspot.Com - A little over two years ago, we launched Picasa Web Albums to make publishing photos online easy. Now Picasa Web Albums hosts billions of online photos from around the globe, with users adding millions of new snapshots every day. Each of these photos records a different moment, or a different perspective, but one thing they all have in common is that in each case, the person behind the camera wanted to share their experience with a friend, their extended family, or maybe the world.Today, we're rolling out major technology upgrades to both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums. As you might have guessed, these are largely focused on how we share and enjoy our photos with others.For starters, there's a brand-new feature called "name tags" in Picasa Web Albums that helps you quickly label all the people in your photos, so you can organize and share your photos based on who's in the picture. Name tags uses advanced technology to automatically group similar faces together. That way, you can quickly label all the people you care about in your photo collection. Once you've labeled your photos, it's then a snap to do things like create a slideshow with every picture of you and your best friend, or easily share party photos with everybody who appears in that photo album. This demo video shows you what you can do with name tags: There's more to Picasa Web Albums. The site now has a fresh, clean look that makes photos look great, and a new "Explore" page that allows you to browse some of the most interesting public content on our site, including "Recent Photos," a near-real-time view of public photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums. You can now also email photos directly to Picasa Web Albums.Of course, Picasa Web Albums is only half the story. The great advantage of Picasa Web Albums has always been its integration with Picasa, Google's free photo management software for your PC. And today we're making public the beta version of Picasa 3 at picasa.google.com.Sharing photos with Picasa has always been remarkably simple, but in Picasa 3, we've made sharing so simple you don't even have to lift a finger. A new 'sync to web' button allows you to sync specified albums on your PC to the web. If you edit or add photos to the album on your PC, those changes will be automatically reflected on Picasa Web Albums. You can even specify who you'd like to share your web albums with from the Picasa software itself.We've packed many other new features into Picasa 3. There's a slew of powerful new editing tools to retouch and restore photos, automatically detect and fix red-eye, or attractively add text to your images. Plus, there's plenty of the fun stuff -- we completely overhauled things like photo collages and slideshows, giving you more creative freedom over composition and layout. Not to mention a brand-new movie maker that can blend photos, video, webcam capture, and music to create customized movies that you can easily share on YouTube.You can learn more about Picasa 3 and the new Picasa Web Albums on the Google Photos blog, or by watching the overview video below. Please give both a try -- and give us feedback!Posted by Mike Horowitz, Product Manager
Official Google Blog: Introducing Picasa 3.0 (and big changes for Picasa Web Albums) {...}
Indexed: September 2, 2008, 11:22 pm - Page Size: 80KB
Category: Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google

]]> Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google {INTERNET > GOOGLE} - Search quality, continued http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/search-quality-continued-2008098293.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/computers/internet/searching/search-engines/google/search-quality-continued-2008098293.htm Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:42:20 GMT A few weeks back Udi Manber introduced the search quality group, and the previous posts in this series talked about the ranking of documents. While the ranking of web documents forms the core of what makes search at Google work so well, your search experience consists of much more than that. In this post, I'll describe the principles that guide our development of the overall search experience and how they are applied to the key aspects of search. I will also describe how we make sure we are on the right track through rigorous experimentation. And the next post in this series will describe some of the experiments currently underway. Let me introduce myself. I'm Ben Gomes, and I've been working on search at Google since 1999, mostly on search quality. I've had the good fortune to contribute to most aspects of the search engine, from crawling the web to ranking. More recently, I've been responsible for the engineering of the interface for search and search features. A common reaction from friends when I say that I now work on Google's search user interface is "What do you do? It never changes." Then they look at me suspiciously and tell me not to mess with a good thing. Google is fine just the way it is -- a plain, fast, simple web page. That's great, but how hard can that be?" To help answer that question, let me start with our main goal in web search: to get you to the web pages you want as quickly as possible. Search is not an end in itself; it is merely a conduit. This goal may seem obvious, but it makes a search engine radically different from most other sites on the web, which measure their success by how long their users stay. We measure our web search success partly by how quickly you leave (happily, we hope!). There are several principles we use in getting you to the information you need as quickly as possible: A small page. A small page is quick to download and generally faster for your browser to display. This results in a minimalist design aesthetic; extra fanciness in the interface slows down the page without giving you much benefit. Complex algorithms with a simple presentation. Many search features require a great deal of algorithmic complexity and a vast amount of data analysis to make them work well. The trick is to hide all that complexity behind a clean, intuitive user interface. Spelling correction, snippets, sitelinks and query refinements are examples of features that require sophisticated algorithms and are constantly improving. From the user's point of view search, almost invisibly, just works better. Features that work everywhere. Features must be designed such that the algorithms and presentation can be adapted to work in all languages and countries. Consider the problem of spell correction in Chinese, where user queries are often not broken up into words or Hebrew/Arabic, where text is written right to left (interestingly, this is believed to be an example of first-mover disadvantage -- when chiseling on stone, it is easier to hold the hammer in your right hand!). Data driven decisions - experiment, experiment, experiment. We try to verify that we've done the right thing by running experiments. Designs that may seem promising may end up testing poorly.There are inherent tensions here. For instance, showing you more text (or images) for every result may enable you to better pick out the best result. But a result page that has too much information takes longer to download and longer to visually process. So every piece of information that we add to the result page has to be carefully considered to ensure that the benefit to the user outweighs the cost of dealing with that additional information. This is true of every part of the search experience, from typing in a query, to scanning results, to further exploration.The start of your search is typing in a query. A common cause of frustration is if you don't know the correct spelling of a word! Spell correction -- which seems like a simple and obvious feature -- hides many technical challenges. No common English dictionaries would ever include the correct spelling of Britney Spears, for instance (who, probably completely unbeknownst to her, has become the poster child example for this feature). We do a huge amount of analysis of the billions of pages on the web and our query logs to determine what are "real words" on the web, and what are likely to be misspellings. The system that gives you the spell correction has to, in a fraction of a second, consider a huge number of possible words you might have meant (vastly greater than any dictionary ever manually constructed) and determine if there is a more likely query you meant to type. When we are confident that you actually meant to type something else, we take a rare liberty with our search results: we try to distract you from looking at the top result on the page. The spelling correction is in your line of sight and colored a bright must-see red. Furthermore, we now make sure that nothing else on the page is red, unless it is as important to you as spelling! (so far, nothing is). The algorithms involved in spell correction are constantly getting better. They now work in a large number of languages and are even better at detecting when you have made a spelling mistake. Getting the spelling of your query right is so important that we are considering showing you the results of the spell-corrected query in the middle of the page (just in case you missed our bright red text at the top and bottom!). Having formulated your query correctly, the next task is to pick a page from the result list. For each result, we present the title and url, and a brief two line snippet. Pages that don't have a proper title are often ignored by users. One of the bigger recent changes has been to extract titles for pages that don't specify an HTML title -- yet a title on the page is clearly right there, staring at you. To "see" that title that the author of the page intended, we analyze the HTML of the page to determine the title that the author probably meant. This makes it far more likely that you will not ignore a page for want of a good title. Below the title comes the snippet, and a key early innovation was in what Google showed for the snippet. At the time, search engines showed you the first two lines of the web page; Google, instead, showed you parts of the page where your actual search keywords showed up (information retrieval experts call this "keywords-in-context"). Showing keywords-in-context is visually simple and virtually indistinguishable from the simpler style of snippets, but vastly more useful in helping you decide which page to visit. This simplicity belies underlying complexity: when we create a snippet we have to go through the actual text from each result to find the most relevant part (which contain your keywords) rather than just giving you the first few lines. We have been making improvements to our snippets over time with algorithms for determining the relevance of portions of the page. The changes range from the subtle -- we highlight synonyms of your query terms in the results -- to more obvious. Here's an example screenshot where the user searched for "arod" and you can see that Alex and Rodriguez are bolded in the search result snippet, based on our analysis that you might plausibly be referring to him:As a more obvious example, we now extract and show you the byline date from pages that have one. These byline dates are expressed in a myriad formats which we extract and present uniformly, so that you can scan them easily:For one of the most common types of user needs, navigational queries -- where you type in the name of a web site you know -- we have introduced shortcuts (we refer to them as sitelinks). These sitelinks allow you to get to the key parts of the site and illustrate many of the same principles alluded to above; they are a simple addition to the top search result that adds a small amount of extra text to the page.For instance, the home page of Hewlett-Packard has almost 60 links, in a two-level menu system. Our algorithms, using a combination of different signals, pick the top ones among these that we think you are most likely to want to visit.What if you did not find what you were looking for among the top results? In that case, you probably need to try another query. We help you in this process by providing a set of query refinements at the bottom of the results page -- even if they don't give you the query that you need, they provide hints for different (likely more successful) directions in which you could refine your query. By placing the query refinements at the bottom of the page, the refinements don't distract users, but are there to help if the rest of the search results didn't serve a user's information need.I've described several key aspects of the search experience, including where we have made many changes over time -- some subtle, some more obvious. In making these changes to the search experience, how do we know we've succeeded, that we've not messed it up? We constantly evaluate our changes by sharing them with you! We launch proposed changes to a tiny fraction of our users and evaluate whether it seems to be helping or hurting their search experience. There are many metrics we use to determine if we've succeeded or failed. The process of measuring these improvements is a science in itself, with many potential pitfalls. Our experimental methodology allows us to explore a range of possibilities and launch the ones that work the best. For every feature that we launch, we have frequently run a large number of experiments that did not see the light of day.So let me answer the question I started with: We're actually constantly changing Google's result page and have been doing so for a long time. And no, we won't mess with a good thing. You won't let us.In the next post in this series, I'll talk about some of the experiments we are running, and what we hope to learn from them.Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer Googleblog.Blogspot.Com Search quality, continued {new window}   Googleblog.Blogspot.Com - A few weeks back Udi Manber introduced the search quality group, and the previous posts in this series talked about the ranking of documents. While the ranking of web documents forms the core of what makes search at Google work so well, your search experience consists of much more than that. In this post, I'll describe the principles that guide our development of the overall search experience and how they are applied to the key aspects of search. I will also describe how we make sure we are on the right track through rigorous experimentation. And the next post in this series will describe some of the experiments currently underway. Let me introduce myself. I'm Ben Gomes, and I've been working on search at Google since 1999, mostly on search quality. I've had the good fortune to contribute to most aspects of the search engine, from crawling the web to ranking. More recently, I've been responsible for the engineering of the interface for search and search features. A common reaction from friends when I say that I now work on Google's search user interface is "What do you do? It never changes." Then they look at me suspiciously and tell me not to mess with a good thing. Google is fine just the way it is -- a plain, fast, simple web page. That's great, but how hard can that be?" To help answer that question, let me start with our main goal in web search: to get you to the web pages you want as quickly as possible. Search is not an end in itself; it is merely a conduit. This goal may seem obvious, but it makes a search engine radically different from most other sites on the web, which measure their success by how long their users stay. We measure our web search success partly by how quickly you leave (happily, we hope!). There are several principles we use in getting you to the information you need as quickly as possible: A small page. A small page is quick to download and generally faster for your browser to display. This results in a minimalist design aesthetic; extra fanciness in the interface slows down the page without giving you much benefit. Complex algorithms with a simple presentation. Many search features require a great deal of algorithmic complexity and a vast amount of data analysis to make them work well. The trick is to hide all that complexity behind a clean, intuitive user interface. Spelling correction, snippets, sitelinks and query refinements are examples of features that require sophisticated algorithms and are constantly improving. From the user's point of view search, almost invisibly, just works better. Features that work everywhere. Features must be designed such that the algorithms and presentation can be adapted to work in all languages and countries. Consider the problem of spell correction in Chinese, where user queries are often not broken up into words or Hebrew/Arabic, where text is written right to left (interestingly, this is believed to be an example of first-mover disadvantage -- when chiseling on stone, it is easier to hold the hammer in your right hand!). Data driven decisions - experiment, experiment, experiment. We try to verify that we've done the right thing by running experiments. Designs that may seem promising may end up testing poorly.There are inherent tensions here. For instance, showing you more text (or images) for every result may enable you to better pick out the best result. But a result page that has too much information takes longer to download and longer to visually process. So every piece of information that we add to the result page has to be carefully considered to ensure that the benefit to the user outweighs the cost of dealing with that additional information. This is true of every part of the search experience, from typing in a query, to scanning results, to further exploration.The start of your search is typing in a query. A common cause of frustration is if you don't know the correct spelling of a word! Spell correction -- which seems like a simple and obvious feature -- hides many technical challenges. No common English dictionaries would ever include the correct spelling of Britney Spears, for instance (who, probably completely unbeknownst to her, has become the poster child example for this feature). We do a huge amount of analysis of the billions of pages on the web and our query logs to determine what are "real words" on the web, and what are likely to be misspellings. The system that gives you the spell correction has to, in a fraction of a second, consider a huge number of possible words you might have meant (vastly greater than any dictionary ever manually constructed) and determine if there is a more likely query you meant to type. When we are confident that you actually meant to type something else, we take a rare liberty with our search results: we try to distract you from looking at the top result on the page. The spelling correction is in your line of sight and colored a bright must-see red. Furthermore, we now make sure that nothing else on the page is red, unless it is as important to you as spelling! (so far, nothing is). The algorithms involved in spell correction are constantly getting better. They now work in a large number of languages and are even better at detecting when you have made a spelling mistake. Getting the spelling of your query right is so important that we are considering showing you the results of the spell-corrected query in the middle of the page (just in case you missed our bright red text at the top and bottom!). Having formulated your query correctly, the next task is to pick a page from the result list. For each result, we present the title and url, and a brief two line snippet. Pages that don't have a proper title are often ignored by users. One of the bigger recent changes has been to extract titles for pages that don't specify an HTML title -- yet a title on the page is clearly right there, staring at you. To "see" that title that the author of the page intended, we analyze the HTML of the page to determine the title that the author probably meant. This makes it far more likely that you will not ignore a page for want of a good title. Below the title comes the snippet, and a key early innovation was in what Google showed for the snippet. At the time, search engines showed you the first two lines of the web page; Google, instead, showed you parts of the page where your actual search keywords showed up (information retrieval experts call this "keywords-in-context"). Showing keywords-in-context is visually simple and virtually indistinguishable from the simpler style of snippets, but vastly more useful in helping you decide which page to visit. This simplicity belies underlying complexity: when we create a snippet we have to go through the actual text from each result to find the most relevant part (which contain your keywords) rather than just giving you the first few lines. We have been making improvements to our snippets over time with algorithms for determining the relevance of portions of the page. The changes range from the subtle -- we highlight synonyms of your query terms in the results -- to more obvious. Here's an example screenshot where the user searched for "arod" and you can see that Alex and Rodriguez are bolded in the search result snippet, based on our analysis that you might plausibly be referring to him:As a more obvious example, we now extract and show you the byline date from pages that have one. These byline dates are expressed in a myriad formats which we extract and present uniformly, so that you can scan them easily:For one of the most common types of user needs, navigational queries -- where you type in the name of a web site you know -- we have introduced shortcuts (we refer to them as sitelinks). These sitelinks allow you to get to the key parts of the site and illustrate many of the same principles alluded to above; they are a simple addition to the top search result that adds a small amount of extra text to the page.For instance, the home page of Hewlett-Packard has almost 60 links, in a two-level menu system. Our algorithms, using a combination of different signals, pick the top ones among these that we think you are most likely to want to visit.What if you did not find what you were looking for among the top results? In that case, you probably need to try another query. We help you in this process by providing a set of query refinements at the bottom of the results page -- even if they don't give you the query that you need, they provide hints for different (likely more successful) directions in which you could refine your query. By placing the query refinements at the bottom of the page, the refinements don't distract users, but are there to help if the rest of the search results didn't serve a user's information need.I've described several key aspects of the search experience, including where we have made many changes over time -- some subtle, some more obvious. In making these changes to the search experience, how do we know we've succeeded, that we've not messed it up? We constantly evaluate our changes by sharing them with you! We launch proposed changes to a tiny fraction of our users and evaluate whether it seems to be helping or hurting their search experience. There are many metrics we use to determine if we've succeeded or failed. The process of measuring these improvements is a science in itself, with many potential pitfalls. Our experimental methodology allows us to explore a range of possibilities and launch the ones that work the best. For every feature that we launch, we have frequently run a large number of experiments that did not see the light of day.So let me answer the question I started with: We're actually constantly changing Google's result page and have been doing so for a long time. And no, we won't mess with a good thing. You won't let us.In the next post in this series, I'll talk about some of the experiments we are running, and what we hope to learn from them.Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer
Official Google Blog: Search quality, continued {...}
Indexed: September 1, 2008, 1:42 pm - Page Size: 87KB
Category: Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google

]]> Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google {LIBRARIES > WEBLOGS} - Weird Universe http://articles.world-of-newave.info/reference/libraries/library-and-information-science/weblogs/weird-universe-2008092433.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/reference/libraries/library-and-information-science/weblogs/weird-universe-2008092433.htm Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:37:23 GMT I have long been a fan of News of the Weird. Not only is it humorous, it can be used as a great teaching tool. I wrote a lesson plan on this years ago titled Using Weird News to Teach About Verifying Information on the Web.For the last year, I have been following the almost daily blog of News of the Weird which was at a Blogger blogspot address. Last week, the author discontinued that site to create a new one. It is Weird Universe. Several people into collecting weird and strange news have come together to create on terrific blog. Go ahead and check it out. I promise you will find items to help you in teaching critical thinking at the library!From the site:Weird Universe explores every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only "stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine." Information-literacy.Net Weird Universe {new window}   Www.Information-literacy.Net - I have long been a fan of News of the Weird. Not only is it humorous, it can be used as a great teaching tool. I wrote a lesson plan on this years ago titled Using Weird News to Teach About Verifying Information on the Web.For the last year, I have been following the almost daily blog of News of the Weird which was at a Blogger blogspot address. Last week, the author discontinued that site to create a new one. It is Weird Universe. Several people into collecting weird and strange news have come together to create on terrific blog. Go ahead and check it out. I promise you will find items to help you in teaching critical thinking at the library!From the site:Weird Universe explores every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only "stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine."
The Information Literacy Land of Confusion: Weird Universe {...}
Indexed: September 1, 2008, 1:37 pm - Page Size: 90KB
Category: Reference > Libraries > Library and Information Science > Weblogs

]]> Reference > Libraries > Library and Information Science > Weblogs {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - Gustav: Online resources are up, Blackwater gears up, Twitter blows up. http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/gustav-online-resources-are-up-blackwater-gears-20080895627.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/gustav-online-resources-are-up-blackwater-gears-20080895627.htm Sun, 31 Aug 2008 23:13:58 GMT (1) Here is an interactive, Java-animated map of Gustav's path, courtesy NOAA. (2) Mercenary army outsourcers Controversial private security contractor firm Blackwater is gearing up for disaster in the Gulf, as Hurricane Gustav approaches. Snip from a "help wanted" ad on the firm's website: Blackwater is compiling a list of qualified security personnel for possible deployment into areas affected by Hurricane Gustav. Applicants must meet all items listed under the respective Officer posting and be US citizens. Contract length is TBD. Via Clayton Cubitt. Update: Noah Shachtman at Wired Danger Room has much more on Blackwater's renewed presence in the region. (3) Sean Bonner of metblogs writes: This morning I've stumbled across a good number of online resources for Hurricane Gustav and New Orleans and thought it would be good to start a list here to keep track of them. Feel free to add any in the comments and I'll try to keep this list updated with any links posted. Gustav resources online (hub.metblogs) (4) You can follow Twitter chatter about #gustav here. Needless to say, the search string updates very frequently right now. (5) Wikipedia says the Swedish name "Gustav" means "Staff of the Goths." (image: by Flickr user Maitri V-R, shot this weekend in the French Quarter of New Orleans.) (6) Here is a Hurricane Gustav Wiki. This is the wiki for information relating to Hurricane Gustav and its approach to the northern Gulf coast. It's intended to be centralized site for links to information everywhere else on the web; please publicize it far and wide. Information will be moved here as time progresses from the similar wiki built during and after Hurricane Katrina's landfall 3 years ago. Please be polite and patient in working with the wiki and the community it attracts, to the extent that you can, and hopefully, everyone will get through this one in one piece. The creator of that Wiki, Andy Carvin, is asking Google Map gurus to help him create a comprehensive Gustav map mashup: We should build a map - or work with google to do so - that plots out as much data as possible re: evac centers, storm route, damage, flood reports, etc. If Google or someone else is doing it already, great; let's embed it. If not, we need to find some Google Map gurus to figure out how to get started. (thanks, Andy Carvin and Noelle McAfee) (7) About a quarter of all crude oil production in the United States takes place in the Gulf region. And nearly 100% of the oil-related activity in this region has now been shut down. What will happen to the price of oil?(8) Video: Anatomy of a Hurricane, embedded at the bottom of this BB post. An educational film produced in 1996 by the US Department of the Interior. "Hurricanes are beautifully organized storms of destruction... An average hurricane releases heat equivalent to the total electrical energy consumed annually in the United States." (from The Open Video Project, via Siege) (9) Doc Searls has a post up with pointers on "Getting Gustav." A little guide to New Orleans radio & other Hurricane Gustav sources. If you?re using a regular over-the-air-type radio, and you?re within 750 miles or so of New Orleans, tune in 870am to hear WWL. It?s one of the original (literal) clear channel stations. In the old days you?d get them from coast to coast at night, but in recent years the FCC has chosen to allow new stations to clutter the AM band at night (when signals skip off the ionosphere). But still, worth a check if you?re within range. WWL also has a hurricane coverage network of other stations in the area. If you?re listening over the Net, your station choices are WWL and WIST. Here?s a link to a browser thingie that plays WWL (using Windows Media or Silverlight). Here?s WIST?s audio page. Wish either used .mp3, but this isn?t the right time to complain. Both have excellent local coverage right now, from what I can gather. Lots of listener call-in stuff. (10) New Orleans Metblog contributor Craig, who owns a restaurant called Janitas on Magazine street, has decided to stay put and liveblog whatever happens. It sounds like he is a former broadcast industry professional. He finds lulz in these hard hours, with news crews pouring in as residents pour out: Being the only restaurant open on lower Magazine kinda made us The Place To Be. The ONLY Place to be. It was good to share some ?do you know?? time with folks in my former profession and to talk a little of what used to be shop. Some white SUV drove by with a big ?TV? plastered on it in black electrical tape. Given the deserted streets, I felt like I was in Beirut or someplace. Some ningnong TV guy was just on the tube, still wearing his cap and damp rain gear, facing the camera and intoning, ?Tonight, New Orleans is a city holding it?s breath?? Puh-leeze. Folks like you are part of the reason why I?m not in that business anymore. Start with his post titled "Here we go...", then read the others. (Thanks, Sean Bonner) (11) T-Mobile has opened its WiFi networks in the Gulf region for free access, which ought to greatly help with availability of telephony and data services. Previously on Boing Boing: New Orleans mayor: "We really don't have the resources to rescue you after this."... Boingboing.Net Gustav: Online resources are up, Blackwater gears up, Twitter blows up. {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - (1) Here is an interactive, Java-animated map of Gustav's path, courtesy NOAA. (2) Mercenary army outsourcers Controversial private security contractor firm Blackwater is gearing up for disaster in the Gulf, as Hurricane Gustav approaches. Snip from a "help wanted" ad on the firm's website: Blackwater is compiling a list of qualified security personnel for possible deployment into areas affected by Hurricane Gustav. Applicants must meet all items listed under the respective Officer posting and be US citizens. Contract length is TBD. Via Clayton Cubitt. Update: Noah Shachtman at Wired Danger Room has much more on Blackwater's renewed presence in the region. (3) Sean Bonner of metblogs writes: This morning I've stumbled across a good number of online resources for Hurricane Gustav and New Orleans and thought it would be good to start a list here to keep track of them. Feel free to add any in the comments and I'll try to keep this list updated with any links posted. Gustav resources online (hub.metblogs) (4) You can follow Twitter chatter about #gustav here. Needless to say, the search string updates very frequently right now. (5) Wikipedia says the Swedish name "Gustav" means "Staff of the Goths." (image: by Flickr user Maitri V-R, shot this weekend in the French Quarter of New Orleans.) (6) Here is a Hurricane Gustav Wiki. This is the wiki for information relating to Hurricane Gustav and its approach to the northern Gulf coast. It's intended to be centralized site for links to information everywhere else on the web; please publicize it far and wide. Information will be moved here as time progresses from the similar wiki built during and after Hurricane Katrina's landfall 3 years ago. Please be polite and patient in working with the wiki and the community it attracts, to the extent that you can, and hopefully, everyone will get through this one in one piece. The creator of that Wiki, Andy Carvin, is asking Google Map gurus to help him create a comprehensive Gustav map mashup: We should build a map - or work with google to do so - that plots out as much data as possible re: evac centers, storm route, damage, flood reports, etc. If Google or someone else is doing it already, great; let's embed it. If not, we need to find some Google Map gurus to figure out how to get started. (thanks, Andy Carvin and Noelle McAfee) (7) About a quarter of all crude oil production in the United States takes place in the Gulf region. And nearly 100% of the oil-related activity in this region has now been shut down. What will happen to the price of oil?(8) Video: Anatomy of a Hurricane, embedded at the bottom of this BB post. An educational film produced in 1996 by the US Department of the Interior. "Hurricanes are beautifully organized storms of destruction... An average hurricane releases heat equivalent to the total electrical energy consumed annually in the United States." (from The Open Video Project, via Siege) (9) Doc Searls has a post up with pointers on "Getting Gustav." A little guide to New Orleans radio & other Hurricane Gustav sources. If you?re using a regular over-the-air-type radio, and you?re within 750 miles or so of New Orleans, tune in 870am to hear WWL. It?s one of the original (literal) clear channel stations. In the old days you?d get them from coast to coast at night, but in recent years the FCC has chosen to allow new stations to clutter the AM band at night (when signals skip off the ionosphere). But still, worth a check if you?re within range. WWL also has a hurricane coverage network of other stations in the area. If you?re listening over the Net, your station choices are WWL and WIST. Here?s a link to a browser thingie that plays WWL (using Windows Media or Silverlight). Here?s WIST?s audio page. Wish either used .mp3, but this isn?t the right time to complain. Both have excellent local coverage right now, from what I can gather. Lots of listener call-in stuff. (10) New Orleans Metblog contributor Craig, who owns a restaurant called Janitas on Magazine street, has decided to stay put and liveblog whatever happens. It sounds like he is a former broadcast industry professional. He finds lulz in these hard hours, with news crews pouring in as residents pour out: Being the only restaurant open on lower Magazine kinda made us The Place To Be. The ONLY Place to be. It was good to share some ?do you know?? time with folks in my former profession and to talk a little of what used to be shop. Some white SUV drove by with a big ?TV? plastered on it in black electrical tape. Given the deserted streets, I felt like I was in Beirut or someplace. Some ningnong TV guy was just on the tube, still wearing his cap and damp rain gear, facing the camera and intoning, ?Tonight, New Orleans is a city holding it?s breath?? Puh-leeze. Folks like you are part of the reason why I?m not in that business anymore. Start with his post titled "Here we go...", then read the others. (Thanks, Sean Bonner) (11) T-Mobile has opened its WiFi networks in the Gulf region for free access, which ought to greatly help with availability of telephony and data services. Previously on Boing Boing: New Orleans mayor: "We really don't have the resources to rescue you after this."...
Gustav: Online resources are up, Blackwater gears up, Twitter blows up. - Boing Boing {...}
Published: August 31, 2008, 11:13 pm - Indexed: September 2, 2008, 7:42 am - Page Size: 78KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk {NORTH AMERICA > REAL ESTATE} - Location, Location, Location for Prime Turnkey Cafe' (petaluma) http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/location-location-location-for-prime-turnkey-cafe-20080856135.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/location-location-location-for-prime-turnkey-cafe-20080856135.htm Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:06:58 GMT Location, Location, Location! $125,000.00 for turn key business. Take over well established highly profitable business, change ownership and start work next week. This is a fantastic opportunity to own your own Café in old downtown Petaluma. Capitalize on the location with high foot traffic, great visibility and ample parking convenient to all shops and the turning basin. Promote your own baked goods, catering or any other spin-offs. Keep our concept or create your own. The possibilities are endless but this location is PRICELESS in the heart of downtown Petaluma!!! Sale includes all rights to existing LLC business name and concept, equipment, fixtures, inventory, full ABC beer & wine license, web site & domain, all signage including (2) brand new custom sandwich boards and training to operate the existing business. Owner will take you under his wings to set you up for success. Transfer of ownership will include all vendor contacts, start-up requirements and the coveted recipes if you wish. This is a turnkey business just waiting for your energy & vision. Owner is expanding and needs a bigger location. This is a perfect opportunity for the right person new to the industry. Training from the owner is INVALUABLE and takes years and diligence to acquire. Payment terms can be arranged with half down and the remainder paid over 6 months with a binding legal contract. Site specifics: 700 SF + outside seating Seating capacity is 45 Open 7 days a week with no operating hour limits ABC Beer and wine license Existing Website and domain(s) Existing Signage & Graphics Great lease terms and flexible landlord. Two 5 year options remaining and 1st right of refusal to expand next door. Super low rent and low overhead. Loyal, friendly customer base. No brokers please; only serious inquires and willingness to sign confidentiality agreement required. Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Location, Location, Location for Prime Turnkey Cafe' (petaluma) {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - Location, Location, Location! $125,000.00 for turn key business. Take over well established highly profitable business, change ownership and start work next week. This is a fantastic opportunity to own your own Café in old downtown Petaluma. Capitalize on the location with high foot traffic, great visibility and ample parking convenient to all shops and the turning basin. Promote your own baked goods, catering or any other spin-offs. Keep our concept or create your own. The possibilities are endless but this location is PRICELESS in the heart of downtown Petaluma!!! Sale includes all rights to existing LLC business name and concept, equipment, fixtures, inventory, full ABC beer & wine license, web site & domain, all signage including (2) brand new custom sandwich boards and training to operate the existing business. Owner will take you under his wings to set you up for success. Transfer of ownership will include all vendor contacts, start-up requirements and the coveted recipes if you wish. This is a turnkey business just waiting for your energy & vision. Owner is expanding and needs a bigger location. This is a perfect opportunity for the right person new to the industry. Training from the owner is INVALUABLE and takes years and diligence to acquire. Payment terms can be arranged with half down and the remainder paid over 6 months with a binding legal contract. Site specifics: 700 SF + outside seating Seating capacity is 45 Open 7 days a week with no operating hour limits ABC Beer and wine license Existing Website and domain(s) Existing Signage & Graphics Great lease terms and flexible landlord. Two 5 year options remaining and 1st right of refusal to expand next door. Super low rent and low overhead. Loyal, friendly customer base. No brokers please; only serious inquires and willingness to sign confidentiality agreement required.
Location, Location, Location for Prime Turnkey Cafe' {...}
Published: August 30, 2008, 9:06 pm - Indexed: August 31, 2008, 12:20 am - Page Size: 5KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate {ISSUES > BIAS AND BALANCE} - Corsi's previous appearance on "pro-White" radio show was streamed live on "White Nationalist" Stormfront.org http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/corsi-s-previous-appearance-on-pro-white-radio-show-20080829711.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/corsi-s-previous-appearance-on-pro-white-radio-show-20080829711.htm Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:11:14 GMT As Media Matters for America and the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog have noted, Obama Nation author Jerome Corsi is reportedly scheduled to appear on the August 17 edition of The Political Cesspool Radio Show. Corsi's previous appearance on the July 20 edition of The Political Cesspool -- during which he promoted The Obama Nation and criticized Sen. Barack Obama -- was streamed "Live" on the self-described "White Nationalist" and "White Pride" website Stormfront.org. Additionally, at several points during the July 20 broadcast prior to Corsi's appearance, host James Edwards and co-host Winston Smith expounded on their views on race. Edwards claimed that "most Jews ... regard[] Jews and whites as two different races," and Smith repeatedly referred to Obama as a "mulatto." According to its "Statement of Principles," The Political Cesspool Radio Show "represent[s] a philosophy that is pro-White." According to a Google cache snapshot of Stormfront.org "as it appeared on Jul 21, 2008 00:01:06 GMT," text under the headline "Stormfront Broadcast Radio" stated: "Live NOW: Political Cesspool BACK ON AIR! - Special two-hour show starting for Internet listeners! - James Edwards, Winston Smith, Eddie 'The Bombardier' Miller! Our featured guest is author and columnist Dr. Jerome Corsi." According to a June 10, 2004, forum post by "Sr. [forum] Moderator" Jamie Kelso, Edwards joined Stormfront.org in 2004 under the screen name "ElectEdwards." Kelso wrote: "Two of the marvelous speakers at the 2004 [European-American Unity and Leadership] New Orleans Conference, Bob Whitaker and James Edwards, registered their screen names since that event. Bob Whitaker is with us under the nom de screen of Bob Whitaker of whitakeronline and Tennessee's own James Edwards joins us as ElectEdwards." ElectEdwards has identified himself as "James Edwards" in several posts, and also stated that The Political Cesspool was his show in numerous posts. ElectEdwards has stated of Stormfront.org that he is a "proud" member and that "[w]hile I rarely have had the time to post on Stormfront, there is never a day that passes that I don't visit this site." After The Political Cesspool temporarily went off the air, Edwards wrote in a February 13 post on Political Cesspool's blog that "Stormfront Radio ... provided tremendous aid to the cultivation of our broadcast. We salute you." On April 4, Edwards wrote that The Political Cesspool "continues to live on in syndication with daily re-runs airing via Dixie Broadcasting Radio, Inc., Stormfront Radio and other networks." In a June 22 Washington Post article, staff writer Eli Saslow wrote that Obama's victory in the Democratic primary has "sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them" and cited Stormfront.org as "a central meeting place for the white power movement." Saslow also discussed Don Black, whom ElectEdwards described as giving him "support": Don Black spends 16 hours each day on his laptop computer reading hundreds of derogatory Obama comments posted on Stormfront.org, a Web site with the motto "white pride world wide." Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, launched the site in 1995 to create a central meeting place for the white power movement. In the wake of Obama's securing enough delegates for the nomination, Stormfront, he says, has begun to fulfill his vision. A site that drew a few thousand visitors per day in 2002 has expanded into Black's full-time job, attracting more than 40,000 unique users each day who can post on 54 different message boards, he said. Black has enlisted 40 moderators and his 19-year-old son to help run Stormfront. Posters on Stormfront complain that Obama represents the end of "white rule" and the beginning of "multiculturalism." They fear that he will promote affirmative action, support illegal immigration and help render whites, who make up two-thirds of the U.S. population, "the new minority." "I get nonstop e-mails and private message from new people who are mad as hell about the possibility of Obama being elected," said Black, a white power activist since the 1970s. "White people, for a long time, have thought of our government as being for us, and Obama is the best possible evidence that we've lost that. This is scaring a lot of people who maybe never considered themselves racists, and it's bringing them over to our side." The Google cache of Stormfront.org's website "as it appeared on Jul 21, 2008 00:01:06 GMT," taken on August 14 at 4 p.m. ET: Mediamatters.Org Corsi's previous appearance on "pro-White" radio show was streamed live on "White Nationalist" Stormfront.org {new window}   Mediamatters.Org - As Media Matters for America and the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog have noted, Obama Nation author Jerome Corsi is reportedly scheduled to appear on the August 17 edition of The Political Cesspool Radio Show. Corsi's previous appearance on the July 20 edition of The Political Cesspool -- during which he promoted The Obama Nation and criticized Sen. Barack Obama -- was streamed "Live" on the self-described "White Nationalist" and "White Pride" website Stormfront.org. Additionally, at several points during the July 20 broadcast prior to Corsi's appearance, host James Edwards and co-host Winston Smith expounded on their views on race. Edwards claimed that "most Jews ... regard[] Jews and whites as two different races," and Smith repeatedly referred to Obama as a "mulatto." According to its "Statement of Principles," The Political Cesspool Radio Show "represent[s] a philosophy that is pro-White." According to a Google cache snapshot of Stormfront.org "as it appeared on Jul 21, 2008 00:01:06 GMT," text under the headline "Stormfront Broadcast Radio" stated: "Live NOW: Political Cesspool BACK ON AIR! - Special two-hour show starting for Internet listeners! - James Edwards, Winston Smith, Eddie 'The Bombardier' Miller! Our featured guest is author and columnist Dr. Jerome Corsi." According to a June 10, 2004, forum post by "Sr. [forum] Moderator" Jamie Kelso, Edwards joined Stormfront.org in 2004 under the screen name "ElectEdwards." Kelso wrote: "Two of the marvelous speakers at the 2004 [European-American Unity and Leadership] New Orleans Conference, Bob Whitaker and James Edwards, registered their screen names since that event. Bob Whitaker is with us under the nom de screen of Bob Whitaker of whitakeronline and Tennessee's own James Edwards joins us as ElectEdwards." ElectEdwards has identified himself as "James Edwards" in several posts, and also stated that The Political Cesspool was his show in numerous posts. ElectEdwards has stated of Stormfront.org that he is a "proud" member and that "[w]hile I rarely have had the time to post on Stormfront, there is never a day that passes that I don't visit this site." After The Political Cesspool temporarily went off the air, Edwards wrote in a February 13 post on Political Cesspool's blog that "Stormfront Radio ... provided tremendous aid to the cultivation of our broadcast. We salute you." On April 4, Edwards wrote that The Political Cesspool "continues to live on in syndication with daily re-runs airing via Dixie Broadcasting Radio, Inc., Stormfront Radio and other networks." In a June 22 Washington Post article, staff writer Eli Saslow wrote that Obama's victory in the Democratic primary has "sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them" and cited Stormfront.org as "a central meeting place for the white power movement." Saslow also discussed Don Black, whom ElectEdwards described as giving him "support": Don Black spends 16 hours each day on his laptop computer reading hundreds of derogatory Obama comments posted on Stormfront.org, a Web site with the motto "white pride world wide." Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, launched the site in 1995 to create a central meeting place for the white power movement. In the wake of Obama's securing enough delegates for the nomination, Stormfront, he says, has begun to fulfill his vision. A site that drew a few thousand visitors per day in 2002 has expanded into Black's full-time job, attracting more than 40,000 unique users each day who can post on 54 different message boards, he said. Black has enlisted 40 moderators and his 19-year-old son to help run Stormfront. Posters on Stormfront complain that Obama represents the end of "white rule" and the beginning of "multiculturalism." They fear that he will promote affirmative action, support illegal immigration and help render whites, who make up two-thirds of the U.S. population, "the new minority." "I get nonstop e-mails and private message from new people who are mad as hell about the possibility of Obama being elected," said Black, a white power activist since the 1970s. "White people, for a long time, have thought of our government as being for us, and Obama is the best possible evidence that we've lost that. This is scaring a lot of people who maybe never considered themselves racists, and it's bringing them over to our side." The Google cache of Stormfront.org's website "as it appeared on Jul 21, 2008 00:01:06 GMT," taken on August 14 at 4 p.m. ET:
Media Matters - Corsi's previous appearance on "pro-White" radio show was streamed live on "White Nationalist" Stormfront.org {...} Jerome Corsi's appearance on the July 20 edition of The Political Cesspool Radio Show -- during which he promoted The Obama Nation and criticized Sen. Barack Obama -- was streamed "Live" on the self-described "White Nationalist" and "White Pride" website Stormfront.org. Prior to Corsi's appearance on the July 20 broadcast, host James Edwards claimed that "most Jews ... regard[] Jews and whites as two different races," and co-host Winston Smith repeatedly referred to Obama as a "mulatto." {...}
Published: August 16, 2008, 12:11 am - Indexed: August 16, 2008, 12:22 pm - Page Size: 35KB
Category: Society > Issues > Business > Media > Bias and Balance

]]> Society > Issues > Business > Media > Bias and Balance {RESOURCES > NEWS AND MEDIA} - 15th Anniversary: Why J. J. Abrams, Joe Trippi and Hilary Rosen Remain Wired Heroes * http://articles.world-of-newave.info/business/resources/news-and-media/15th-anniversary-why-j-j-abrams-joe-trippi-and-hilary-20080875616.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/business/resources/news-and-media/15th-anniversary-why-j-j-abrams-joe-trippi-and-hilary-20080875616.htm Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:00:00 GMT Years after they first appeared in Wired, these three VIPs remain in the spotlight. J. J. Abrams Since upgrading TV with that confounding isle, he's taken on 2009's Star Trek prequel. Why he does it "It's cool to bring something to life, whether it's a song or a video. But to do it and have it embraced by millions ... like Lost, that's insane." Hilary Rosen Once a foe (she helped shut down Napster), the ex-RIAA chief made a heroic comeback by penning a love letter to Creative Commons in Wired. She now heads lesbian social network OurChart. Why she does it "I worked hardest to bring the tech and content communities together. It is happening." Joe Trippi Howard Dean's campaign manager pioneered the Web-centric bottom-up politics that has propelled Obama's run. Why he does it "I got the chance to put Washington and Silicon Valley together. We are seeing an Apollo project of a new kind of politics being built right now." * Dead to us: Sonic the Hedgehog, Terry Semel, the Wachowski Siblings, Hans Reiser Q&A with Hilary Rosen Wired: With OurChart you used one platform (the television show The L Word) to launch another (a social network). How did you hook up with Ilene Chaiken, and when/how did the "aha" moment happen? Were you convinced from the outset that OurChart would be a success, and why? Rosen: OurChart was Ilene's idea. We are old friends. She and Kara Swisher (AllthingsD.com) came to me and said that they thought "TheChart" from the show, which was literally a chart on the wall of one of the main character's living room that connected who slept with whom, should go online as a social network — broadening, of course, the purpose beyond sex! The L Word has long served as kind of an analog social networking vehicle for the lesbian community. People watch it at bars and at parties. We created a business plan that would incorporate what people liked about the show, which meant providing original lesbian and fan-centered entertainment content and combined that with traditional SN features. Showtime and CBS were very supportive. Wired: Only a few other social networks have launched via television shows, but none has replicated the success of OurChart. Why do you think the L Word's audience took so well to a new online community? Rosen: Lesbians are a hugely underserved market. This is a community with some $300 billion in annual consumer spending. Marketers and advertisers have started paying attention to the gay market over the last few years, but mostly that has been to target gay men. Surveys show that lesbian households have as much disposable income as gay male households. We knew if we built it they would come — both users and advertisers. Wired: What other projects are on the horizon for you? Rosen: I am now concentrating on some projects in Washington. I work for a few great companies like XM Radio and Viacom. The brilliant Jay Berman and I have a partnership that helps companies like Facebook navigate the IP world. Politics has always been my hobby, and this year it is also my business. It is as important an election as we have ever had. I am on-air on MSNBC as one more talking head discussing the same things as everyone else, but I hope sometimes with a different angle. And I am excited about a new role I have taken with The HuffingtonPost.com as a political director and an at-large editor. The site's traffic is through the roof, and as the largest site for progressive voices, we are going to have a great impact on this election. Given my experience, I am also helping the team develop the business side as well. It is a great group of people, and Arianna [Huffington] is, as everyone knows, a fantastic force of nature. Politics has always been my hobby, and this year it is also my business. It is as important an election as we have ever had. I am on-air on MSNBC as one more talking head discussing the same things as everyone else, but I hope sometimes with a different angle. And I am excited about a new role I have taken with The HuffingtonPost.com as a political director and an at-large editor. The site's traffic is through the roof, and as the largest site for progressive voices, we are going to have a great impact on this election. Given my experience, I am also helping the team develop the business side as well. It is a great group of people, and Arianna is, as everyone knows, a fantastic force of nature. Wired: You've noted the "chilling effect" the RIAA's actions had on legitimate uses/users. Knowing what you know now, would you still file the same suit against Napster? Rosen: We had no choice but to sue Napster. I tried to avoid it because I thought the service was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. But they weren't knowledgeable enough to be interested in talking at the beginning. It was the first big program, and the precedent needed to be set. Wired: Do you think the Big Five should have accepted the licensing agreement that was on the table during the Napster 1.0 days? (i.e., $1 billion over five years). Had they accepted the offer, how might the landscape of online music and the industry itself be entirely different from where we are today? Rosen: I don't know if that particular deal is the one that should have been done, but I do firmly believe that the record companies should have made a deal. At the time, no amount of money that Napster put on the table seemed large enough because it was virtually impossible to compare the then current revenues from sales to the proposed digital revenues. The record companies weren't willing to jump off the cliff and take a chance. That was a mistake which can never be undone. P2P took over, and we had no technology or consumer allies, which we might have had if we had a deal. Having said that, the Napster management was difficult to deal with because the players kept changing. I understand the interest that people have in wanting to know how this fantastic industry with so much potential for growth has now shrunk so dramatically. The fact is that there are so many reasons. And I can only scratch the surface here. Maybe someday I'll write a book. In the record industry there were problems with the retail distribution, with advertising and marketing strategies, with demographics focusing too much on the young hit maker and not serving the older buyer, with artist relations, with international piracy, and so many other areas. Technology and the piracy it facilitated (and continues to facilitate) was a major reason as well, of course. And this is the issue that got the most play. Senior executives at the record industry were often trapped in the same short-term thinking that a lot of business executives get trapped into — which is making the current quarter revenues as high as possible and hoping that the next quarter works out. It is also fair to say that the most influential record executives were more music men and not businessmen (yes, all men), and therefore there was no problem that a great "hit" wouldn't fix. But it is so wrong to blame the record companies alone. The music publishers wouldn't license, the retailers threatened the labels with retaliation if they distributed online at a cheaper rate than they sold physical products, and the artists wouldn't reduce advance requests to try and experiment more online. In short, it required the entire music community to see the future in the same way and commit to working together — a very difficult scenario to pull off. And exacerbating the problems within the music business was a very real arrogance in the technology community that valued technological innovation above all. Their disdain for the music community was palpable and irritating to many of my colleagues. After all, artists worked as hard to create their music as software developers worked to create their technology. ISPs were making more money when piracy was a driver to upgrade to high-speed; hardware makers were incorporating CD-Rs and increasing prices. Once MP3 distribution was rampant, the tech industry didn't think it needed the legitimate music industry because their consumers were being served with the unauthorized music. Most of the best innovators in the field didn't want the music industry to succeed because too many of them believed that it was a zero-sum game. Well, that needed to change. I wasn't going to be able to undo 30 years of mistrust within the music community since that was in others' control. So I worked hardest to try to bring the technology and content communities together to see their common interests in upgrading the consumer experience with legitimate higher-quality music and artist participation in the extra content that fans wanted. Much of my time in my last few years at RIAA was in that behind-the-scenes shuttle diplomacy, urging the experimentation with business models and facilitating licensing systems. While the language and orientations are still different between content and technology, there is at least some great understanding now. And though there is still a great amount of unauthorized stuff online now, consumers have some great choices and lots of companies are working hand in glove with the music industry to make the offerings even better. It has taken so much longer than any of us would have liked or even predicted, but it is happening. Wired: Since stepping down from the RIAA, you've consulted for companies like XM Radio. Some would say you've switched teams. Is that a fair assessment? Rosen: No, I haven't switched teams. I am inherently a proponent of intellectual property protection and its critical role in the creation of art and the commercial support of artists. But I do call them as I see them. And sometimes that means that I disagree with some of my former employers. Not that anyone cares, including me, but I've turned down fortunes to go against them because I just couldn't reconcile the work with either my beliefs or my loyalty. Wired: You helped found Rock the Vote and work with a number of nonprofits. Do you ever worry people will instead remember you more for the turbulent times you spent at the RIAA? Rosen: Geez, I haven't turned 50 yet! I hope the epitaph isn't written. Having said that, I do think I have had a great and varied career as a business executive, a television commentator, a lobbyist, and an activist, and all the time working on issues that I really like. Hopefully that will continue. I definitely have another act or two in me. Wired: Did that period sour you to music, music fans, the music business at all? Rosen: No, RIAA didn't sour me on music at all. I originally took the job because I was such a music fan, I loved almost every minute of it, and I am still a music fan. But it is nice now to listen to an artist or a new song and not worry about whether they get along with their record company, who's getting paid on what, whether the release was leaked online before its release, and whether it is meeting its sales targets! Wired: And if you had your way, what would you most want to be remembered for above all else? Rosen: Who knows?! Who cares?! I guess I just want my kids to be happy and do good in the world. Q&A with Joe Trippi Wired: In 2004 you pointed to the fences and declared that the 2008 race would be the "first national contest waged and won primarily online." The first point is irrefutable. Based on what we've seen thus far in 2008, why is the battle being waged online really more vital than, say, 30-second TV spots or door-to-door stumping? Trippi: The important differences can be seen between the Clinton old "top-down" campaign and the Obama "bottom-up" Internet-savvy campaign. Hillary Clinton was dependent on $2,300 checks — and could not replicate them — having to loan herself millions just to keep up with Obama's online small donors who were able to contribute repeatedly. Obama's volunteers who signed up online organized his caucus victories for free while contributing to pay for the professional, paid Obama organizers they worked with. Clinton did not have enough of these online activists to keep up with Obama in the caucus states — so she lost almost all of them. TV took people out of the process — the Internet and technology are putting people back into the process. Politicians, government officials, CEOs, and others who fail to understand that this changes everything are going to be shocked at what happens to them as their competitors "get it." Wired: During the ?04 election, at one point, John Kerry had raised roughly 37 percent of his campaign funds from his Web site. Today, $45 of the $55 million Barack Obama raised in February alone streamed in from the Web. Did you expect the shift toward Web-based fund-raising to accelerate this much in only four years time? Will we see even more impressive numbers before November? Trippi: In my book, [The Revolution Will Not Be Televised], I said that the $100 revolution was just around the corner — that a candidate in the 2008 cycle would be able to mobilize millions to contribute small contributions of $100 or less. Before this campaign started, I believed and still believe that a candidate (probably Barack Obama) will raise a half-billion dollars just in the general election. The math is simple: 5 million Americans giving $100 each. We are still scratching the surface of what's possible as more Americans get involved in their democracy. Fifty-seven million voted for John Kerry, 60 million or so voted for George Bush — you cannot tell me that 10 percent of the Kerry voters would not have given him $100. The real trigger will be a candidate who limits General Election contributions to a small amount like $250 or less, and millions of Americans realize they can block the special interests and change our politics with a small contribution or helping in some other way. This is going to happen this year. I am sure of it. And BTW, in 2012 or 2016 it will be even bigger. It's the network, stupid. And the network is growing. Wired: If 2004 is remembered as the year of micro-targeting and online campaigning, what will the legacy of 2008? Also, Obama's campaign has sparked a wave of Web-based creativity — from T-shirts to viral sites like barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com. Had John Edwards stayed in the race, what might your strategy have been to compete, diffuse, or work around all the buzz? Trippi: I think that the creativity unleashed by sites like YouTube.com will be the hallmark of this cycle. In 2004 we created DeanTV, a 24/7 broadband channel where anyone could upload a video, a mashup of a Dean speech, or anything they wanted — about 200,000 people used it. Turns out we had created our own YouTube before YouTube created YouTube. The important thing to understand is that TV and Internet campaigning are still intertwined. Elizabeth Edwards called into Hardball on MSNBC to confront Anne Coulter and created an online firestorm. The problem for the Edwards campaign was that no matter what we did, the media focused on Clinton vs. Obama. And the more coverage Obama got, the more his online buzz grew. This wasn't new to me — we benefited from this same kind of media focus in the Dean campaign. Our strategy in the Edwards campaign was to build a strong online presence and then beat both Obama and Clinton in Iowa. We felt if we could do that the media would focus on us and that our Internet presence would combine to dramatically shoot us into contention. We took second — and close never matters in politics. Wired: I understand you kept a 90-day calendar, color-coded to track traffic to JohnEdwards.com. What was the most common cause for the larger spikes? Trippi: The larger spikes were almost always caused by something related to Elizabeth Edwards, she gets bottom up politics and the Internet better than anyone ? candidate or spouse I have ever worked with. She connects with people and she is authentic and those two things created a lot of the spikes in sign-ups or contributions to our campaign. Wired: Keeping tabs on what's happening online is beyond a full-time job. What's your best advice for, say, a small-town politician running on a lean budget and staff? Trippi: This isn't hard or expensive. Start a blog, a Twitter account, and a FriendFeed. Ten minutes a day with just these three tools can make a huge difference. But let's look into the future for a second. Somewhere today there is someone who is oblivious to these tools who is running for city council and is dialing for dollars. There is someone else running for city council who is dialing for dollars but also is collecting emails and growing followers on Twitter. Ten years from now they will both be running against each other for Congress — any guesses at who is going to kick whose? Wired: Can these tools that are used for campaigning also be used to govern? Trippi: John F. Kennedy heralded in the age of the television presidency. It changed everything — a president at his inaugural could rally the nation. In January 2009, the next president of the United States will herald in the age of the networked presidency. The inaugural will be live-blogged and mashed up. The new president will outline the agenda for the first 100 days of his administration, and online communities will rally to the cause of passing health care and other agenda items like never before. It will only be the beginning, just as JFK was only the beginning of how television changed governing — but we are about to witness and be part of the most sweeping change in government and people's participation in our government since the revolution of 1776, and it will change more than how we are governed — it will (just as television did) change everything. Wired: Why does it really matter if your video gets, say, 75,000 more hits on YouTube than the other candidate? And how does popularity online carry over to the voting booth, especially during an extended primary season? Trippi: The big difference is that if you hear something interesting on the radio, or see something that catches your attention on TV, you cannot interact with it instantly — you cannot respond by joining up or by putting it to music, and you can't send it on to every one of your friends shouting to the rooftops "Eureka! I found it!" Will.I.am's mashup of Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" speech was passed friend to friend by millions of Americans — most of us got it from a friend or someone