NewsTrust - Innovation - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

How the five web literacies are becoming essential survival skills

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Justin Ellis - May. 13 (News Report) - Howard Rheingold isn’t too concerned about whether Google is making us stupid or if Facebook is making us lonely. Those kind of criticisms, Rheingold says, miscalculate the ability humans have to change their behavior, particularly when it comes to how we use social media and the Internet more broadly. “If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool,” Rheingold said Thursday. Rheingold was visiting the MIT Media Lab to talk about his new book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, which examines how people can use the Internet not just to better themselves, but also society as a whole. Rheingold has a longer online history than most, going back to The WELL, one of the first online forums back in the 1980s. Ever since writing about that experience, Rheingold has developed a habit for dropping the kind of book that not just probes what it means to be online, but charts what that means for all of us.

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First Details About Lift, the Next Social Network From the Founders of Twitter

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ReadWriteWeb - By Marshall Kirkpatrick - Aug. 24 (News Report) - The recently-departed co-founders of Twitter who are now working together again under the old Obvious Corp. name (Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman) announced their first official partnership today, with a stealth alpha app called Lift. It's described as simple app for achieving goals through positive reinforcement. It sounds like Twitter and from what I've seen (which is more than I've seen reported about elsewhere yet) it looks a lot like Twitter too - but with more structure. What's called Lift today was apparently called Mibbles just weeks ago and was described then as "a very simple tracking and...

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USA Inc.

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Morgan Stanley - By Mary Meeker - Feb. 26 (Special Report) - Imagine for a moment that the United States government is a public corporation. Imagine that its management structure, fiscal performance, and budget are all up for review. Now imagine that you’re a shareholder in USA Inc. How do you feel about your investment? Because 45% of us own shares in publicly traded companies, nearly half the country expects quarterly updates on our investments. But although 100% of us are stakeholders in the United States, very few of us look closely at Washington’s financials. If we were long-term investors, how would we evaluate the federal government’s business model, strategic plans, and operating efficiency? How would we react to its earnings reports? Nearly two-thirds of all American households pay federal income taxes, but very few of us take the time to dig into the numbers of the entity that, on average, collects 13% of our annual gross income (not counting another 15- 30% for payroll and various state and local taxes).

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FactChecking Obama’s Address

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, Viveca Novak, Eugene Kiely, Lori Robertson, D’Angelo Gore - Jan. 26 (News Analysis) - We found no outright false factual claims in Obama’s State of the Union address, but we did note some that were arguable, and some promises that may prove unrealistic. He called his Race to the Top initiative “the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation.” That’s debatable. Some independent experts say Bush’s No Child Left Behind program had a greater impact. The president set a goal of generating 80 percent of the nation’s electricity from “clean” sources by 2035. That’s ambitious. The first large-scale “clean coal” plant has yet to begin operation. And Obama counts nuclear energy as a “clean” source, despite the unresolved waste issue. He set a goal of giving 80 percent of the U.S. population access to high-speed rail in the next 25 years. But the U.S. only has one high-speed rail line in operation now. He said his new health care law will slow rising health care costs. But the office of Medicare’s chief actuary estimates the law won’t have much impact on costs, and there will be a slight rise in total spending as more people gain coverage under the law. He said “exports are up” since he set a goal of doubling them in five years, which is true. But the rise so far falls short of the pace required to meet his goal. On other factual matters we found the president’s statements to be accurate, or reasonably so. He said the U.S. subjects businesses to “one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world,” which is borne out by the Word Bank and other studies. He said U.S. engineers gave the nation’s infrastructure a grade of “D,” which is true. That rating was issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers. And he said U.S. workers are unexcelled in productivity, which is true according to one ranking and nearly true by other measures.

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Fact-checking Obama's State of the Union speech

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan, Aaron Sharockman - Jan. 26 (News Analysis) - President Barack Obama struck a centrist tone in his second State of the Union speech, arguing for corporate tax cuts and fewer government regulations. PolitiFact watched the entire speech and checked several of Obama's claims. Later, we began taking on the GOP response from Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan. (We will supplement our coverage tonight with more fact-checks of the speeches by Obama, Ryan and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., tomorrow.) We started our fact-checking by analyzing Obama's contention that the U.S. economy is beginning to recover.

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Berners-Lee: Facebook 'threatens' web future

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Register - By Cade Metz - Nov. 20 (News) - Tim Berners-Lee has dubbed Facebook a threat to the universality of the world wide web. Next month marks the twentieth anniversary of the first webpage – served up by Berners-Lee at the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva – and in the December issue of Scientific American, he celebrates the uniquely democratic nature of his creation, before warning against the forces that could eventually bring it down. "Several threats to the Web’s universality have arisen recently," he says.

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ShopIgniter Helps Retailers Set Up Shop On Facebook

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - Sep. 13 (News) - Theres no doubt that Facebook could one day operate a massive digital mall in the future, allowing users to buy clothes, electronics and other goods from within the social network. ShopIgniter is helping make this a reality by powering online storefronts for retailers on Facebook. ShopIgniter offers a software that allows retailers to essentially build sleek storefront on Facebook, giving users the ability to add new products, pricing, options, categories, collections, brands, and more in a branded Facebook application. Buyers can post reviews and complete a transaction directly within the Facebook store. And ShopIgniter also allows retailers to offer group based promotions, private access sales, online coupons and more. Plus, ShopIgniter also powers web-based e-commerce platforms apart from Facebook. You can see Sound Earphones ShopIgnitor-powered site here and Facebook page here. The startup, which has raised $3 million from Madrona Venture Group, faces competition from Alvenda, Payvment and BigCommerce. [crunchbase url="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/shopigniter" name="ShopIgniter"]

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The Silicon Lining

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Guy Sorman - Jun. 03 (Special Report) - California’s innovative high-tech firms keep creating wealth, but will bad state policies drive them out?

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The Virtual University

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Anya Kamenetz - Apr. 21 (Special Report) - The higher-education system has a lot in common with another great challenge our country is confronting: health care. Colleges, like hospitals, have little incentive to conserve resources or compete on price. They can actually gain prestige by raising tuition. They shift costs to students to make up for gaps in state funding and then hand out grant money to the applicants they want the most, not the ones who need the most help. Community colleges dedicated to serving the poorest get a fraction of the public money that goes to flagship state universities.

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Betting on Change

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Clive Thompson - Apr. 21 (Special Report) - Companies, of course, exist to make money. That's often what makes them seem so rapacious. But their primal greed also plants them inevitably in the "reality-based community."

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Five Reasons the iPad Won’t Kill the Kindle (or Other E-Readers)

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

retrevo.com - Mar. 30 (Other) -

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More News about Omidyar’s Peer News

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Sarah Lacy - Mar. 18 (News) - I’m at the NewsMorphosis Conference in Hawaii today locked in a day of debates about the state of news quality and how the hell we find a business model to keep paying for it. It’s a big issue locally– earlier this year three of Hawaii’s five largest TV news stations merged operations and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is merging with the other daily paper the Honolulu Advertiser, resulting in plenty of layoffs and general civic concern.

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College for $99 a Month

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Carey - Oct. 05 (Special Report) - Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows.

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Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug dies at 95

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

apnews.excite.com - Sep. 13 (News Report) - Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the father of the "green revolution" who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in combating world hunger and saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday in Texas.....Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps 1 billion lives..

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Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Kevin Bullis - Aug. 03 (News Report) - The solar industry says incremental advances have made transformational technologies unnecessary.

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A Biofuel Process to Replace All Fossil Fuels

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Kevin Bullis - Jul. 29 (News Report) - Joule Biotechnologies grows genetically engineered microorganisms in specially designed photobioreactors. The microorganisms use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol or hydrocarbon fuels (such as diesel or components of gasoline). The organisms excrete the fuel, which can then be collected using conventional chemical-separation technologies.

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Boeing: The Wrong Way to Manage Innovation

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

blogs.bnet.com - By Sean Silverthorne - Jul. 24 (Investigative Report) - now, nearly two years behind schedule, it turns out Boeing got it mostly wrong. The Dreamliner has gone through a series of delays getting to first flight, most recently in June when structural problems were discovered where the wing is attached to the fuselage.

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French panel to recommend carbon tax on fuel

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

timesoftheinternet.com - Jul. 23 (News) - A French experts' panel is to recommend introducing a carbon tax on fuel from January 2010, as part of a government drive to slash global warming emissions, the group's head said on Wednesday.

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Wind power throws a curve at the BPA

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OregonLive.com - Jul. 22 (News Report) - Utility wonks have been quipping for years that the future of energy in the Northwest is windy and gassy. When it comes to wind power, the future has already arrived, a reality that has come rushing home in the past two years and created major friction among the Bonneville Power Administration, wind power producers and the agency's utility customers.

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Obama Administration seeking innovation through information technology and citizen outreach

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MinnPost - By Steve Borsch - Jul. 22 (News Report) - Delighted techies and geeks throughout the United States agree: The Obama administration understands open source software, leveraging social media and providing transparency in governmental activities wherever possible. ...

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The Digital Mafia: Online Crime Gets Organized, Says Cisco

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ReadWriteWeb - By Steven Walling - Jul. 21 (News Report) - Bot herders and other nefarious characters are still using cutting-edge computing and social engineering. But according to Cisco's analysis, the real innovation is how those behind some of the biggest threats are collaborating in new ways. It's enterprise 2.0 for the criminal underbelly of the Internet.

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Light Repels Light

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MIT Technology Review - By Anne-Marie Corley - Jul. 20 (News Report) - The repulsive side of an optical force could lead to ultra-fast telecommunications.

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Power lurks in Oregon forests ?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OregonLive.com - Jun. 26 (News Report) - Tucked into a sprawling, 1,200-page climate change bill before Congress today is a tiny paragraph that touches the federal forests covering a quarter of Oregon. It says these lands, that already give us trails to hike and clean water to drink, can provide renewable power for our toasters while helping to replace long gone lumbering jobs. .

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Biotech firms outsource to Asia

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Tom Abate - May. 18 (Special Report) - The global financial crisis has hurt biotechnology, an industry in which it can take a billion dollars and 10 years to create a marketable medicine. But a survey of worldwide industry trends suggests that the funding shortage hitting North American and European market leaders could benefit emerging biotech clusters in Singapore, India and China.

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10 Reasons To Celebrate/Grouse About Greentech on Earth Day

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Katie Fehrenbacher - Apr. 22 (Special Report) - We have a lot to cheer about in this moment — the Obama administration, young people getting excited about careers in energy, and the burst of innovation in startups — but a lot to moan about, too: the darn economy, consumer malaise over climate change issues, and the recent greentech bubble that elevated and crashed quite a few green firms. Here’s our take on what to celebrate and what to grouse about in the greentech biz on the 39th Earth Day:

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