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2008 Elections From the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses to the Nov. 4 general election, information graphics were a major component of the New York Times election coverage. Interactive maps on the nytimes.com home page and inside the web site were rich with information, but easy to navigate.

2008 Olympics Coverage In August 2008, The New York Times graphics department published more than 30 interactive graphics covering subjects ranging from the Olympic torch to the medal count. The package included graphics produced in advance of the games, plus more than a dozen produced on deadline analyzing results from a vareity of events. Because NBC tape-delayed the showing of many events, these graphics frequently were readers' first visual picture of how a race was won.

Flight 1549 Lands in the Hudson River When U.S. Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River, graphics editors immediately began reporting what happened in the air, building 3-D models of the plane and developing an interactive graphic. The graphic was initially published the same day as the emergency landing, and updated over the next several days as more information was released. Published Jan. 15, 2009

So I think that one of the biggest problems that Google has, taking Google as probably the best example of someone trying to build a reputation currency, is that as soon as Google gives you any insight into how they are building their reputation system it ceases to be very good as a reputation system. As soon as Google stops measuring something you created by accident and starts measuring something you created on purpose, it stops being something that they want to measure. And this is joined by the twin problem that what Google fundamentally has is a security problem; they have hackers who are trying to undermine the integrity of the system. And the natural response to a problem that arises when attackers know how your system works is to try to keep the details of your system secret—but keeping the details of Google’s system secret is also not very good because it means that we don’t have any reason to trust it. All we know when we search Google is that we get a result that seems like a good result; but we don’t know that there isn’t a much better result that Google has either deliberately or accidentally excluded from its listings for reasons that are attributable to either malice or incompetence. So they’re really trapped between a rock and a hard place: if they publish how their system works, people will game their system; if they don’t publish how their system works it becomes less useful and trustworthy and good. It suffers from the problem of alchemy; if alchemists don’t tell people what they learned, then every alchemist needs to discover for themselves that drinking mercury is a bad idea, and alchemy stagnates. When you start to publishing, you get science—but Google can’t publish or they’ll also get more attacks.Read more at craphound.com

“After carefully weighing our options for building a social rewards solution in-house versus integrating with a best in class technology provider, we selected Badgeville, a recognized leader in the space, for their comprehensive, lightweight and flexible platform,” said Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain.

Badgeville jumped onto the scene when they won “Audience Choice” at TechCrunch last fall. Within two quarters they’ve captured 50 clients for their “white label” social rewards, loyalty and analytics platform.

Badgeville helps web publishers of all sizes increase audience engagement and unlock new monetization opportunities. The Palo Alto– based company provides platform that makes it easy for web publishers, to increase user loyalty and engagement. 

Online video is exploding, with annual user growth of more than 45 percent. Mobile-device time spent increased 28 percent last year — with average smartphone time spent doubling. And social networks are now used by 90 percent of U.S. Internet users — for an average of more than four hours a month.

Every venture capitalist, Web publisher, and digital marketer is hyper-aware of these three trends.

What replaces the declining searchable Web is a new and “fully connected” digital life. You may have heard this before. After all, the promise of the Web was to connect pages with hyperlinks. Well, this time, “connected” means much more. It means the Web connects us, as people, to each one of the individuals online; and those connections, ultimately, extend from one of us to all of us.

With NFC baked into Symbian Belle (and a few Anna builds!), the number of applications with NFC capability keeps on growing. The latest addition to the number is Foursquare, as detailed in the NFC blog post quoted below. You can now just walk up to a Foursquare check-in poster at an event, tap your phone to it, even if the application isn't already running, and bang, you're checked in. 

From the blog post: The latest addition to the growing number of NFC enabled apps like Angry Birds Magic, Poken, Bounce and Asphalt5 is Foursquare. With the newest version of the application you can use your NFC enabled phone to check-in automatically by just tapping and NFC enabled/tagged poster. No more tedious steps of launching an application waiting for location fix, connecting etc... With NFC this is all done with a simple tap. Furthermore, the developer made it even easier for the user to check-in - without the need to have the app running - just tap and the app starts automatically and checks you in. Pretty awesome and again demonstrating the convenience of NFC! In a separate post Andreas explains how as a developer you can implement application autostart .  Foursquare with NFC support is available in the Nokia Store for Symbian NFC enabled phones (download Symbian version here, N9 support coming soon) . And the best thing about it is that it is not a separate application just for NFC sake. Developers simply added the support for NFC to the existing application version!

Symbian phones with NFC currently number six: the Nokia C7/Oro/Astound, plus the 700/701/603, and all future Nokia smartphones going forwards will also have NFC baked in.

A recent TED video showcased a new publishing platform for the ipad which I believe offers educational publishers a route to producing compelling digital resources to support learning within schools. Push, pop, press are in the process of creating a publishing platform which they plan to license and which allows quick and easy creation of compelling interactive e-books.

Exclusive: In a push to boost its payments platform for the gaming industry, American Express, has acquired virtual currency platform and in-game payments provider Sometrics. The total deal value is $30 million, but both parties declined to reveal further details about the split between cash and stock. Sometrics will become part of the Enterprise Growth Group, and will be used within American Express’ Serve digital payments platform to incorporate virtual currencies and loyalty programs.

Sometrics helps gaming publishers market free-to-play online games and monetize virtual currency with a consumer destination site and in-game payment solutions. Sometrics’ in-game payments platform basically powers virtual currency transactions and payments for game publishers. Sometrics also serves users with targeted offers based on their location, demographic, conversion history and social affiliation.

The company currently supports dozens of payment options (including mobile carrier infrastructure and credit card support) and hundreds of brand engagement ads, reaching a total global audience of more than 225 million consumers in more than 200 countries. And through Sometrics’ analytics capabilities, developers are able to view and analyze which audience demographics are responding to which payment options, respond by pushing traffic to the options that convert best, and optimize those conversions to help maximize revenue. Current gaming partners that use Sometrics include Nexon, NHN USA, IMVU, PopCap, BigPoint, Habbo, and many others.

Here’s some good news for web video publishers and producers. Online video advertising budgets are expected to jump sharply in 2012. Brand advertisers who purchased online video ads this year are projected to spend 47 percent more next year. These numbers were released this morning in the second annual “Video State of the Industry Survey” by Adap.tv and Digiday.

For advertisers that didn’t purchase any video ads so far this year, 84% say they will include digital video in their campaigns in Q4 2011 or 2012.

Advertisers say they are most likely to shift spending away from display and print ads to fund the increased online video spending.

Whether Newsstand was Apple’s strategy all along, I don’t know, but I think it might have been. The app is the unit of distribution for newspapers and magazines, not the “issue” or the “article”. This puts more work on the publishers’ shoulders — they need to design, create, and maintain software, not merely publish content — but it gives them more control over the reader experience and more potential for creativity and differentiation.

Why not the same thing for TV channels? We’re seeing the beginnings of this, with iPhone and iPad apps like HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and the aforementioned Bloomberg TV+. Letting each TV network do their own app allows them the flexibility that writing software provides. News networks can combine their written and video news into an integrated layout. Networks with contractual obligations to cable operators, like HBO and ESPN, can write code that requires users to log in to verify their status as an eligible subscriber.

Why not the same thing for TV sized displays? Imagine watching a baseball game on a TV where ESPN is a smart app, not a dumb channel. When you’re watching a game, you could tell the TV to show you the career statistics for the current batter. You could ask the HBO app which other movies this actress has been in. Point is: it’d be better for both viewers and the networks1 if a TV “channel” were an interactive app rather than a mere single stream of video.

To bypass the media this is what you need to do to apply the “10 New Rules of PR”  1. Think like they do:

Publish your press releases through a distribution service:

ection of the Larger Press Release Distribution Services BusinessWire www.businesswire.com PRWeb www.prweb.com PRNewswire www.prnewswire.com Market Wire  www.marketwire.com

AND Chief Executive Officer Maarten Oldenhof says the company experienced a challenging start of 2011. “We are in close contact with various big companies, however we depend on the decisions of these parties and their long approval procedures. We see opportunities in the strong growing Smartphone market and social networks, such as Facebook, Groupon and Twitter. Social media on the smartphone is very powerful and location-based services are a must.” Revenue in the first four months of 2011 has declined, which has led to a loss in the first four months of 2011. Given the current size of AND, the development in revenue and results are greatly influenced by whether or not closing orders in a given period, both large and small. Further, big companies in the market are very careful with making decisions because of quickly changing market developments and especially the influence on their business models.

Outlook for 2011 The economic climate, market developments and business models are all very uncertain in the market for digital maps. The development of the results in 2011 will depend on the strength of the economic recovery and developments in the market for navigation and location based services. Therefore, AND is not in the position to provide an outlook for the full year 2011.

Researchers have reported evidence that cell phone radiation has a variety of alarming biological effects, which are sure to fuel concerns about whether or not phones impact human health. Scientists reportedly found that GSM signals fragmented insect DNA in ovarian cells, that a brief "mild electromagnetic field" affects bone formation in fetuses, and that cell phone-frequency radiation increased the permeability of the blood-brain barrier in young adult male rats.

These findings were reported in a press release issued by the Environmental Health Trust, which notes that the rat brains can be "used to correspond to the brains of human teenagers." "This work provides a warning signal to all of us," said Professor Wilhelm Mosgoeller from the Medical University of Vienna. "The evidence justifies precautionary measures to reduce the risks for everyone of us."

other research findings, while potentially interesting, appear to be in-vitro studies of isolated cells. Proving biological effects of radiation on cells is useful in determining the ways radiation might impact humans in the real world, but it does not directly prove much beyond the experimental criteria.

For the emergent generation of adolescents and pre-adolescents, at least in developed economies, constant high-speed internet access and online networking have become the very air they breathe. A new study, however, has some cautionary advice.The study, published in Acta Paediatrica, has renewed concerns about how digital life has led children off the playground and into the computer room… permanently. The study concludes that the average 10-year-old today

For the emergent generation of adolescents and pre-adolescents, at least in developed economies, constant high-speed internet access and online networking have become the very air they breathe. A new study, however, has some cautionary advice.

The study, published in Acta Paediatrica, has renewed concerns about how digital life has led children off the playground and into the computer room… permanently. The study concludes that the average 10-year-old today is far weaker physically than his counterpart just a decade ago. His arm strength has fallen by 26%, he can do 27% less sit-ups, and he is less likely to be able to hold his weight hanging from a bar.

Putting sensors and actuators in everything from homes and cars to shoes and coffee cups promises to make our daily lives easier, safer and more efficient. But such 'ambient intelligence' requires a merger of the virtual and digital worlds. EU-funded researchers in the Sensei project are bridging the gap and their results are already leading to 'smart cities' being set up all over Europe.

'Today, the internet world is a virtual world of data mostly stored and accessed from servers,' says Dr Hérault. In the future, we will have an 'Internet of things' in which a multitude of things in the real, physical world will be digitised continuously: in many situations, we won't just be asking web servers for data, we will be asking sensors in everyday objects for data, he suggests. 'We need to understand how best to interconnect the real world and the virtual world.' 

An open service interface that uses semantic information to process data means that information is accessible and understandable to both humans and machines.  'You could ask, for example, "What is the temperature on Oxford Street?" The system would decode that semantic information, access sensor networks on Oxford Street that have temperature sensors, check the reliability of each network with regard to information quality, and return an answer,' Dr Hérault explains. 

The business climate, it turns out, is a lot like the weather. And we've entered a next-two-hours era. The pace of change in our economy and our culture is accelerating--fueled by global adoption of social, mobile, and other new technologies--and our visibility about the future is declining.

Uncertainty has taken hold in boardrooms and cubicles, as executives and workers (employed and unemployed) struggle with core questions: Which competitive advantages have staying power? What skills matter most? How can you weigh risk and opportunity when the fundamentals of your business may change overnight?

Look at the global cell-phone business. Just five years ago, three companies controlled 64% of the smartphone market: Nokia, Research in Motion, and Motorola. Today, two different companies are at the top of the industry: Samsung and Apple. This sudden complete swap in the pecking order of a global multibillion-dollar industry is unprecedented. Consider the meteoric rise of Groupon and Zynga, the disruption in advertising and publishing, the advent of mobile ultrasound and other "mHealth" breakthroughs (see "Open Your Mouth And Say 'Aah!'). Online-education efforts are eroding our assumptions about what schooling looks like. Cars are becoming rolling, talking, cloud-connected media hubs. In an age where Twitter and other social-media tools play key roles in recasting the political map in the Mideast; where impoverished residents of refugee camps would rather go without food than without their cell phones; where all types of media, from music to TV to movies, are being remade, redefined, defended, and attacked every day in novel ways--there is no question that we are in a new world.

A new Greek scientific study has demonstrated how frequency electromagnetic fields, namely cell phones, portable phones, WiFi, and wireless computer equipment, alter important protein changes in the brains of animals. Exposure to electromagnetic frequencies is the result of our advancing technologies, but it is important to study these effects so people know exactly what they’re dealing with in order to take the necessary precautionary measures.

The study, entitled “Brain proteome response following whole body exposure of mice to mobile phone or wireless DECT base radiation,” was published in the journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine. Important areas of the brain such as the hippocampus, cerebellum, and frontal lobe are regions responsible for learning, memory, and other functions. These areas are negatively impacted by microwave radiation, even at levels below the safety guidelines put in place by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation protection

Researchers found that 143 proteins in the brain were negatively impacted by radio frequency radiation over a period of 8 months. A total of 3 hours of cell phone exposure were simulated over the 8 month time period, and the results showed that many neural function related proteins’ functional relationship changed the for worse.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- When an unidentified $30 debit showed up on her bank statement as an electronic funds transfer, Cheryl Hicks was mystified.

Each month, three electronic transfers go through her account -- and this wasn't one she recognized. "It just said ACH debit and the amount," said Hicks, a 33-year-old communications manager who lives near Everett, Washington.

Hicks soon discovered her phone company transformed the paper check she sent for payment into an e-transfer, and her bank failed to list either the check number or the recipient on her statement.