NewsTrust - Internet - 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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New Legislation Would Give Power to Keyboard Cops

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Naomi Wolf - May. 07 (Special Report) - The respected Internet technology site Techdirt has called the bill "insanity." It has written that "CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information ... for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as [it] can claim someone committed a ‘cybersecurity crime.'"

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CISPA Critics Warn Cybersecurity Bill Will Increase Domestic Surveillance and Violate Privacy Rights

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - CISPA Critics Warn Cybersecurity Bill Will Increase Domestic Surveillance and Violate Privacy Rights

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Helping readers improve Wikipedia

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wikimedia - By Fabrice Florin, Dario Taraborelli, Howie Fung, Arron Halfaker, Oliver Keyes - Mar. 25 (Special Report) - The Wikimedia Foundation, in collaboration with editors of the English Wikipedia, is developing a tool to enable readers to contribute productively to building the encyclopedia. To that end, we started development of a new version of the Article Feedback Tool (known as AFTv5) in October 2011. The original version of the tool, which allows readers to rate articles based on a star system, launched in 2010. The new version invites readers to write comments that might help editors improve Wikipedia articles. We hope that this tool will contribute to the Wikimedia movement’s strategic goals of increasing participation and improving quality.

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Hypothes.is Reputation Workshop

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Wikipedia - By Dario Taraborelli - Mar. 04 (Special Report) - Hypothes.is founder Dan Whaley invited us to participate in the workshop to contribute to the design of this service with input from Wikimedia and to help them make design decisions for a suitable reputation model to be used by the service. Other prominent Wikipedia researchers (GroupLens founder John Riedl, and WikiTrust creator Luca de Alfaro) were among the participants.

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Poland: Government Will Sign ACTA Despite Massive Protest

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Global Voices - By Katarzyna Odrozek - Jan. 25 (Special Report) - Despite a massive Internet protest and controversies around the secret manner of negotiations, the Polish government will sign the anti-piracy agreement ACTA on January 26, as planned. Katarzyna Odrozek reports.

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Global Internet Voting Firm Buys U.S. Election Results Reporting Firm

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Black Box Voting - By Bev Harris - Jan. 13 (News Analysis) - In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company. When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.

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Now The Largest Game Companies In The World Have Dropped Support For A Bill The Internet Hates

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

businessinsider.com - Dec. 30 (News) - Whew.

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Four lessons from Flipboard’s reinvention for the iPhone

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Jeff Sonderman - Dec. 07 (News Analysis) - The most popular news aggregation app for the iPad launches a new iPhone version Wednesday. Flipboard’s redesign for the smaller screen offers lessons in how publishers should tailor apps for the different needs of tablet and smartphone owners.

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Rupert Murdoch Lobbies Congress To Restrict Internet

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Zach Carter - Dec. 07 (News Report) - WASHINGTON -- News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch threw his weight behind Congress' attempt to restrict the Internet, personally lobbying leaders on Capitol Hill Wednesday for...

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How news orgs are reaching millions through Facebook’s new apps

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Jeff Sonderman - Nov. 30 (News Analysis) - It has been over two months since Facebook announced a new class of social news applications — ones that automatically share links to everything a person reads. Now we are learning more about the readership, strategies and effects of these “open graph” or “frictionless sharing” apps. Here are the six big lessons so far.

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Italian Wikipedia shuts down to protest proposed new libel laws

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

OpenGlobe - By Tempodivalse, C628, Frozen Wind - Oct. 04 (News Report) - The Italian Wikipedia shut down earlier on Tuesday, as a protest against a new libel law proposed in the Italian Parliament. The potential law would force those writing on the Internet two days to remove a post that a claimant considers defamatory to his image, or else be fined 12,000 euros. The legislature is called "DDL intercettazioni", or the Wiretapping Act.

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Spreading Freedom: Google And The War For The Web

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ryan Grim, Zach Carter, Paul Blumenthal - Sep. 25 (Special Report) - [Google] is now giving money to the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Republican Governors Association, the GOP firm The David All Group, Crossroads Strategies, the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee, among others. On Thursday, Google and Fox News cosponsored a Republican presidential debate.

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Are You Being Censored?

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Jonathan Collyer - Sep. 22 (Investigative Report) - Since the story about Yahoo blocking emails with links to occupywallstreet.org broke, we've seen a major upsurge in the number of emails from our readers regarding censorship. It seems an important time to take a serious look at the potential for Internet censorship, what it means for Progressives, and what we can do about it.

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Welcome to Your Hungarian Internet

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

savetheinternet.com - By Tim Karr - Sep. 22 (News Report) - The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the U.S. has sunk to 25th in a global ranking of Internet speeds, just behind Romania. Why? Because our nation's regulators abandoned an earlier commitment to foster competition in the marketplace for Internet access providers.

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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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Hacktivism's Global Reach, From Targeting Scientology to Backing Wikileaks and the Arab Spring

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 16 (Investigative Report) - In recent years, online hackers who identified as being part of Anonymous and other groups have carried out dozens of high-profile online operations. When MasterCard and Visa suspended payments to WikiLeaks last December, hackers with Anonymous briefly took down the websites of both credit card giants. Other targets have included Sony, PayPal, Amazon, Bank of America, the Church of Scientology, and the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. Now law enforcement agencies across the world have begun cracking down on the hackers.

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Almost everything is getting better

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Long Now Foudation - By Kirk Citron - Aug. 10 (News Report) - Last week The Millennium Project released its 02011 State Of The Future report, looking at trends for the past twenty years and projecting ahead for the next decade. (Not the 10,000 year future, but still of interest.) You can read an executive summary of the report here. While the report finds many things to worry about – global warming, terrorism, corruption – overall the trends are surprisingly hopeful, as shown in their chart called “Where we are winning”

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A guide to Baltimore’s online news ecology

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

City Paper - By Michael Byrne - Aug. 09 (Special Report) - For six months, Baltimore was fortunate enough to have an organization here dedicated solely to analyzing the city’s journalistic output, NewsTrust Baltimore (the local pilot project of the larger NewsTrust organization). It was a bit like Yelp crossed with the Columbia Journalism Review. The project ceased operations on July 31 (it was always intended as a six-month pilot), leaving behind a collection of reports, one of which is a final comprehensive analysis of sorts. It eventually concludes, “The local news scene is in a state of flux with more than a little creative chaos. But patterns are emerging. As news startups and impassioned individuals become more rigorous and as traditional news organizations become more open and responsive to the public, there is a growing opportunity for collaboration across the local journalistic community.“

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Amazon’s Market Cap Passes $100 Billion

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Leena Rao - Jul. 27 (News) - After reporting stronger than expected second quarter earnings yesterday, Amazon has passed $100 billion in market cap this morning. The company's shares are currently trading at around $225 per share, giving the e-commerce giant a $101.81 billion market cap.

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Google+: The Complete Guide

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mashable - By Ben Parr - Jul. 16 (Special Report) - This guide has everything you'll ever want to know about Google+. Updated regularly. Google+: It’s the hot social network on the block. In just three weeks, Google’s competitor to Facebook and Twitter has amassed more than 10 million users, and its users are sharing more than 1 billion pieces of content daily. It’s become a hotbed for early adopters, tech luminaries, marketers and businesses around the world. Google+ isn’t the easiest thing to understand, though. It has a lot of features that can confuse beginners. Even advanced users can miss a lot of the little gems and nuances that define Google+. That’s why we decided to dig into every aspect of Google+, from Hangouts to Circles, from Google+ for businesses to what’s next for Google’s social network. The result is an extensive guide on all of Google+’s key features, as well as an introduction to the service and the important things you need to know about it. We’ve included commentary, videos, photos and more in our in-depth guide. In addition, we will update this guide regularly with the newest information on Google’s Facebook competitor. So, without further ado, here is Mashable‘s complete guide to Google+

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U.S. lawmakers frustrated by lack of answers about Google Street View Wi-spying

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

iWatch News - Jul. 05 (News Report) - One year ago, following the German government’s demand for more information, Google representatives were forced to admit that the cars were gathering more than harmless pictures; they were systematically gathering data on anyone using a nearby, unsecured Wi-Fi network. If you were within range and surfing the Web without a password, Google took a little electronic snapshot of whatever you were doing.

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Zynga Files For $1 Bilion IPO

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Business Insider - By Jay Yarow - Jul. 02 (News Report) - Zynga has just filed with the SEC to go public. The company is on pace to generate well over $1 billion in revenue this year, and earn over $36 million. It's a pretty slim profit margin considering reports were circulating that Zynga was earning $400 million on $800 million in revenue earlier this year. It wants to raise $1 billion from the IPO, and it already has $1 billion in cash on hand.

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The Secret $8 Billion Wireless Scam: How AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Game the System

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By David Rosen, Bruce Kushnick - Jun. 20 (Special Report) - Telecom giants Verizon and AT&T have gamed the system, using regulations designed to foster competition to snatch up ever more of the wireless spectrum.

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Apple drops secrecy, confirms iOS 5, iCloud on tap at WWDC 2011

Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Ars Technica - By Casey Johnston - May. 31 (News) - Apple announced today that it plans to introduce the next generation of its mobile platform, iOS 5, as well as a new cloud service called iCloud at the Worldwide Developers Conference next week on Monday, June 6. This is a highly unusual move for Apple, which normally tries to keep their center-ring announcements secret until the scheduled event.

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