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25-year-old Tim Pool — an internationally known journalist who attracts tens of thousands of viewers to his live-stream broadcasts from Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, DC, LA and other cities. (His feeds and archival footage are also aired on mainstream networks such as NBC.) He and his partners hope that the toy chopper — the $300 Parrot AR Drone — will be one step toward a citizen-driven alternative to mainstream news.

Along with “general assembly” and “99 percenters,” Occupy Wall Street has brought the phrase “live streaming” to the forefront. Rising-star reporters — known best by their Twitter and Ustream handles — such as Pool (timcast) in New York City and Spencer Mills (oakfosho) in Oakland are passionate, deeply embedded correspondents who provide live video reporting – sometimes lasting a dozen hours or more – of protests, general assemblies and other Occupy events. Instead of using a satellite truck, they broadcast live “TV” coverage from 3G- and 4G-equipped smartphones over video networks such as Ustream.com and Livestream.com.

The AR Drone is the first toy that came out,” said Sam Shapiro, a 24-year-old programmer from Brooklyn who’s helping Pool hack together an airborne news network.

A common mistake for those seeking to cope with this profound disruption is to confuse technology with innovation. Algorithms, apps and search tools help make data useful but they can’t replace the value judgements at the core of journalism.

Genuine innovation requires a fundamental shift in how journalists think about their role in a changed world. To begin with, they need to get used to being ‘curators’; sorting news from the noise on the social web using smart new tools and good old fashioned reporting skills.

I find it helps to think of curation as three central questions: * Discovery: How do we find valuable social media content? * Verification: How do we make sure we can trust it? * Delivery: How do we turn that content into stories for a changed audience?

Google CEO Larry Page trotted out an impressive statistic during last week's quarterly earnings call: Google+ now has 90 million users, double what it had three months ago. Even better, 60 percent of those users are engaged daily, and 80 percent weekly.

But those users aren't necessarily engaging with Google+. Any action taken during a logged-in Google session—whether it be searching the Internet, checking Gmail or using Google Docs—counts as engagement under the statistic Page used. Google has refused requests from journalists and interested bystanders to reveal exactly what percentage of those 90 million signed-up Google+ users actually view Plus content each day, week or month. Instead, Google is arguing that it doesn't matter: Google+ is so integrated into the overall experience that what matters is the number of users interacting with any Google site. Combined with other steps Google has taken to integrate Plus into search results and other Google properties, the message is clear: Eventually, Google Plus will just be there whether you want it to or not.

On Friday, the Google Operating System blog (not affiliated with Google) wrote a post titled "New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+." While this isn't strictly true, the blog demonstrates how Google is making it difficult for new users not to sign up for Google+.

MasterCard, the longtime credit card and payments processor, wants to reposition itself as a technology company. Throughout the latter half of 2011, it has been pushing hard on the technosphere to make sure that journalists and bloggers know the company is doing some cool stuff around payments research and the cutting edge of technology, like NFC, audio signals and QR codes that can lead to purchases through smartphones.

It now comes as no surprise that MasterCard has announced a partnership with Intel on a multi-year strategic partnership that is intended to enhance the security and payment experience for digital commerce. These are two titans in the tech and financial industries and shows one of the first steps of these two industries merging in the future.

Making A Dent In The 85%

Paul Bradshaw, visiting professor, City University and founder of helpmeinvestigate.com used the principal of toys to give ideas on developing the data story and explained the importance of  “future proofing the information we are gathering”, saying “that’s one of the big commercial imperatives”.

Conrad Quilty-Harper, data mapping reporter at the Telegraph, explained how creating maps adds to a story by using the example of a map on bike sharing schemes he created (though did not publish) using “Google Fusion Tables and a bit of javascript”. He recommends Google Maps and says the trailblazer of a news site using Google Fusion tables is the Texas Tribune.

My proudest example” was a live interactive Royal Wedding map which “worked brilliantly for three hours”. It showed some of the best tweets and were geolocated on the map. “We’ve got the data and we’re going to analyse it and do something with it in the future,” he said. “It tells you what people in specific locations were thinking”. The Telegraph would like to use the technology in a crisis news story, such as an earthquake or conflict.

Traditionally, the most valued content was original. This emphasis developed within a content model of constrained distribution and expensive production costs. When there are only a handful of distribution points for content — some magazines, books, a handful of TV station and radio stations — the way to build audience was to deliver original and exclusive content experiences.

Into this explosion of information comes the concept of Curation. Long-time tech journalist Paul Gillen weighed in on the value of taking a curatorial approach to content in a post about the Chile earthquake. No longer is our problem lack of information; it’s that we’re drowning in information. That’s why curation is so important. Trusted curators who point us to the most valuable sources of information for our interests will become the new power brokers.

Gillen points out that the concept of curation shouldn’t be limited to media brands. Marketers should take this trend into account. Creating new content is important, but an equally valuable service is curating content from other sources. This demands a whole different set of skills as well as a new delivery channel. It also means ditching the “not invented here” mindset that prevents content creators from acknowledging other sources.