With few exceptions, the product talk around the upcoming MeeGo mobile operating system has highly-focused on netbooks and cell phones, and understandably so.  Intel’s legacy contribution to the joint effort, Moblin, was designed for the former while Nokia’s equivalent, Maemo, has been the foundation for the latter.

Less discussed is the opportunity in automobiles… but it’s definitely part of the picture.

Automotivating

When computers first found their way into cars, it was in the form of electronic controls for combustion control, braking and other mechanical functions.  Flaky at first due to the extreme environmental conditions and the immaturity of the industry, these systems are now taken for granted.

The next frontier is in-vehicle entertainment, guidance and other passenger-oriented activities.  None of these are particularly new in parts, but what is fairly novel outside the realm of science fiction is a truly integrated infotainment experience incorporated into the vehicle.

To this end, Intel and Nokia both are key members of the GENIVI Alliance, launched in early 2009 and self-described as:

a non-profit industry alliance committed to driving the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) reference platform. GENIVI will accomplish this by aligning requirements, delivering reference implementations, offering certification programs and fostering a vibrant open source IVI community. Our work will result in shortened development cycles, quicker time-to-market, and reduced costs for companies developing IVI equipment and software.

Intel has been very active on this front, pioneering a powerful embedded solution for automotive computing called Low Power IntelÂ@ In-Vehicle Infotainment. 

Applications

Nokia has demonstrated IVI concepts of its own in the past (Ford Mustang, Renault Twingo), but these have been more proof-of-concept than anything for actual production.  More recently, the announcement of Nokia Terminal Mode for smartphone-car interfacing looks immediately practical.  Interestingly, Nokia is partnering on this with another GENIVI member, car stereo manufacturer Alpine.  At this time I don’t have information if this ties into GENIVI at all.

From a practical standpoint, Intel has the lead here based on its embedded systems work described above.  But Nokia’s expertise in mobile communications will be highly critical in making this venture work.  In other words, this pairing looks more ideal all the time.

Competitors

Nokia’s dalliance with N800s in a Mustang can’t come close to what Microsoft has done with Ford via SYNC.  This popular solution has expanded its range beyond Microsoft’s own products to even include iPhone support.  However, as a closed system I can’t see it coming close to the potential that GENIVI offers, especially given that latter’s membership (more below).

Possibilities

Some time back I envisioned an internet tablet ecosystem where Nokia’s “connecting people” mantra truly manifested.  I imagined (with something like the N800 in mind) a web-enabled touchscreen device that would be my companion throughout the day, in various use cases: sitting on my desk autopaging through an electronic photo album, firing off an alarm to wake me, informing me of appointments for the day, guiding my vehicle to those appointments, alerting me to items and events of interest as I navigated, and serving up detailed information on and around my destinations as I walked that final distance to them.  For those unwilling to live with the bulk of an N800, I pictured the tablet staying in the car but seamlessly handing off its accumulated info to a cell phone of choice to serve in that last mile.

I can see IVI enabling the automotive aspect of this scenario, and then some.  Automobiles stand to finally fulfill fantastic visions dating back decades.  This goes beyond the usual items of infotainment, too– with these systems in place, semi-automated vehicle driving gets a great deal closer to reality.

But as rich an experience as we are poised to receive, there will come some pitfalls.  Already cell phones are being increasingly targetted as devices of dangerous distraction in automotive mishaps.  More and more municipalities in the US alone are passing laws and regulations geared toward discouraging “driving and dialing”.  When our cars truly become our home away from home, as advents like GENIVI will enable, sticky legal issues will likely increase.  It will be up to the solution providers to not only follow relevant laws but also act responsibly in general while adding to the infotainment experience.

Going forward

MeeGo’s open source nature vis-a-vis netbooks and cell phones is one thing; to pull off an open source automotive infotainment paradigm is something on another scale entirely.   If someone had suggested such a thing to me a few years ago I would have scoffed… but reading through the list of GENIVI Alliance members (which includes not only industry giants Intel, Nokia and Alpine but also Garmin, GM, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Navteq, Pioneer, Peugot, Renault and more) leads me to believe Microsoft will soon be facing more than it can handle in this space.

In automotive parlance, GENIVI has traction, and MeeGo is the vehicle that will provide the spark.  Developers, get on now or get left behind!

Il y a quelques jours, je travaillais sur une interface dotée d’une section assez complexe, réagissant de manière radicalement différente en fonction des choix des utilisateurs. Le genre de formulaires insupportables à tiroirs offrant tellement de cas possible que je finissais par ne plus m’y retrouver. Au bout d’un moment, j’ai commencé à réfléchir à un modèle sur deux pages malgré des spécifications me contraignant à une seule.

Au bout d’un moment, j’ai fini par poser ma souris pour aller déjeuner, dans l’espoir que cette pause me permette de prendre du recul. Plus je réfléchissais, et plus la solution sur deux pages me semblait la marche à suivre. Mon formulaire se prêtait largement à une division en deux étapes, la première consacrée aux informations fondamentales, la seconde aux options. Je pouvais même subdiviser chaque page en deux sections distinctes qui offriraient à l’utilisateur un chemin balisé d’un bout à l’autre du formulaire. Renvoyée en page deux, ma section si complexe en serait largement simplifiée grâce aux choix effectués précédemment. J’ai donc relancé Balsamiq Mockups, mon outil de prototypage favori et commencé à designer mon interface. Tout allait pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.

Quelque chose, pourtant, me turlupinait. Deux petites heures plus tard, je sirotais une tasse de Lapsang Souchong tout en m’assurant que je validais bien tous les cas d’usage possibles. Je contemplais mon travail, satisfait du résultat obtenu malgré la complexité fonctionnelle sous-jacente. C’est là que je m’arrêtais net, percé jusqu’au fond du coeur d’une atteinte imprévue aussi bien que mortelle.

… malgré la complexité fonctionnelle sous-jacente.

Je venais de mettre le doigt sur mon problème. La complexité de mon interface n’était que le reflet de ma complexité fonctionnelle. J’aurais probablement du le comprendre immédiatement, mais plongé dans la résolution d’un problème local, j’avais oublié de chercher une solution globale. Une petite heure et une consultation plus tard, tout le fonctionnel superflu disparaissait au profit d’une grande simplification du projet. La voix que nous n’aurions jamais du quitter.

Article original écrit par Frederic de Villamil et publié sur Ergonomie web, Ruby on Rails et Architecture de l'information | lien direct vers cet article | Si vous lisez cet article ailleurs que sur Ergonomie web, Ruby on Rails et Architecture de l'information, c'est qu'il a été reproduit illégalement et sans autorisation.

Saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut emissions without reducing pollution

Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.

The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.

The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future.

Campaigners for tougher emissions reductions said the saved-up allowances discredited the argument of some industries that much deeper cuts in future would be "fatal" because they could no longer afford to compete against rivals outside the EU.

However, companies involved said the banked credits would help them pay to develop new emission-cutting technology, and to meet emissions targets until that became widely available.

Industry also warned it faced "death by a thousand cuts" as a result of the next phase of the scheme, from 2013 and 2020, and other costly environmental legislation planned by government. Business leaders accused the government of being prepared to sacrifice industry to enable other sectors such as aviation to keep polluting and meet the UK's carbon budgets.

One steelmaker told the Guardian: "Officials see us as acceptable collateral in the fight against climate change. If we don't make anything in this country any more, it means people could still fly to Tenerife once a year and the UK will keep within the carbon budget."

He said meeting targets would require vast amounts of steel to build windfarms, nuclear reactors and electric cars. This would have to be imported from more-polluting steelmakers outside Europe if the industry disappeared in the UK.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the centrepiece of the EU's pledge to cut greenhouse gases, has already been criticised for giving many companies allowances to emit more emissions than they need, leaving little incentive to reduce pollution, and for lax regulation.

The latest concern about "banking" credits involves companies also buying cheap allowances from "offset" schemes which reduce emissions in other countries, often China and India, and using these to cover their emissions while keeping their official allowances – which are worth more because projects in other countries could in future be banned.

Analysis for the Guardian by campaign group Sandbag of the figures for 2008, the most recent available, looked at the extra allowances accrued by four big sectors: iron and steel, coke ovens, metal ore processing, and cement, which together have 800 installations covered by the trading scheme, and include big names like ArcelorMittal, Thyssenkrupp, Corus, Holcim and Cemex.

Sandbag calculated the four sectors received permits to emit 66m tonnes more carbon dioxide than they needed in 2008, partly because predicted growth did not happen and partly because of the recession towards the end of the year. In addition they bought cheap offsets for a further 18m tonnes plus, which would then free up more EU allowances. In total the surplus allowances would have been worth nearly €1.2bn (£1.1bn) in 2008, or just over €1.1bn at today's closing price of €12.99. Based on the forecast average price of €30 a tonne for the third phase of the ETS from 2013-2016 by analysts Point Carbon they would be worth more than double that in future.

If the companies stockpiled over-allocated surpluses for the whole of this phase of the ETS, from 2008-2012 they could be worth as much as €3.2bn at today's prices, said Sandbag. Any more credits released by buying offsets would be on top of that.

"If they [companies] want cashflow, which in the current climate they may, then they'll cash in the allowances," said Bryony Worthington, Sandbag's founder and director. "But if they are thinking long-term then they'll be thinking 'I should probably hold on to them and insulate myself for the future'."

ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel producer, has pledged to use profits to invest in future energy savings to reduce pollution, but there were no guarantees they or any other company would have to do this, said Worthington. "How do we police it, they could be using it for dividends or anything," she added.

Ian Rodgers, director of UK Steel, said: "The climate change agenda won't affect the amount of steel consumed, but it will determine where it's produced."

According to industry estimates, the third phase could cost heavy industry – including steelmakers such as Corus, the chemicals industry and the ceramics industry – €1bn a year.

Sandbag will tomorrow publish in-depth analysis for 2008, including the biggest buyers of offsets from developing countries, and a map linking every offset scheme with their European customers.

• Emissions trading
• Carbon emissions
• European Union
• Pollution
• Manufacturing sector
• Climate change

Pink Floyd prevailed in against their record label over the iTunes sales method, which siphons profits through a $.99 sieve.

The case was heard by U.K.'s High Court.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• EMI, One Of The Big Four, Does A Deal With Hulu
• Surprise! EMI Gets A Pop By NOT Selling CDs
• Most Downloaded Songs Of 2008: EMI Actually Makes List

The Hill:
House GOP votes to ban all earmarks  —  House Republicans approved a conference-wide moratorium on earmarks on Thursday, one day after a House committee enacted a ban on for-profit earmarks.  —  The Republicans' moratorium is more extensive than the House Appropriations Committee's ban …

The Public Interest Registry will add an extra layer of security known as DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) to the .org domain in June -- a move that will protect millions of non-profit organizations and their donors from hacking attacks known as cache poisoning.

We know there are lot of entrants in the group deals space — see my recent piece, Groupon and the Wannabes — but now the competitors are seriously bulking up. LivingSocial — which has more than a million daily email subscribers — is today announcing it’s raised a $25 million Series B round led by U.S. Venture Partners and including Grotech Ventures and Revolution Capital, bringing the company to a total of about $35 million raised. That follows Groupon’s $30 million B round from Accel Partners and New Enterprise Associates announced in December.

Setting up group deals does require capital, because you need salespeople on the ground to find desirable venues and negotiate with them — and given the now tens of competitors in some cities, elbow out your rivals’ salespeople. LivingSocial is currently in 13 cities (it launches four more today), still quite a bit behind category leader Groupon, which is in 40. But armed with this new capital, LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy said the company hopes to rapidly expand its business.

O’Shaughnessy said LivingSocial’s angle, beyond deals, is to help small businesses grok social media in order to keep in touch with their customers. The Washington, D.C.-based company, which has been around for two and a half years with products like online book reviews and drink coupons, launched the deals product last summer. “We’re basically creating marketing budgets for people who never had marketing before,” he said. “There are not a lot of ways to guarantee customer foot traffic like we do.”

LivingSocial, which is not currently profitable as it expands (again, regret the incessant Groupon comparisons, but they say they have been turning a profit for a while), takes a 30-50 percent split of revenue collected from its deals, but it only pays out if its customers spend money, so there’s little financial risk for participating businesses. It primarily brings in customers through daily emails, but it also has an iPhone app with push notifications and a Facebook presence. O’Shaughnessy pushes off the competitive angle, saying many more merchants want to work with his company than they have space for, but says he’ll work to stand out from the crowd with the launch of an affiliate program today and soon launching more personalized subscriptions.

P.S. For those of you who are skeptical of group buying and competing in such a jam-packed space, I should say I’m a total believer. In the course of writing this article, I happily bought a half-off coupon for my neighborhood sushi joint, which happened to be LivingSocial’s San Francisco deal of the day. Speaking from personal experience, group deals totally spark spending and loyalty.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

How Social Networks Will Help Yelp, Not Kill It

The Hill:
Infighting is sparked by earmark ban  —  Democratic appropriators in the Senate and House are fighting over a ban on earmarks to for-profit companies, throwing a wrench in a House attempt to burnish its ethics record before the midterm elections.  —  Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) …

Twitter offre aux développeurs d’application d’intégrer la localisation géographique (géotagging) sur un tweet depuis novembre dernier. Cette fonctionnalité fait enfin son apparition sur le site Web de Twitter. Bien qu’elle n’ait pas encore été officiellement annoncée, certains utilisateurs peuvent déjà inclure leur position dans un tweet.

En plus de pouvoir transmettre une localisation géographique, le site de Twitter affiche les géotags sur la ligne temporelles et sur chacun des tweets. Un repère turquoise apparaît au-dessous des messages auxquels une localisation géographique est associée.

Jusqu’à présent, uniquement certaines applications clients comme Tweetie ou Seesmic tiraient profit de cette fonctionnalité. Avez-vous accès à cette fonctionnalité?
Benoit Descary

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Le service de Sony vient tout juste de se mettre à jour, et passe ainsi en version 1.35. Au programme : la disparition de la carte du monde, au profit d’une nouvelle interface que vous pourrez admirer ci-dessous, sensée vous faciliter la vie… Il était temps !

A part ça ? Et bien, du contenu payant basé sur FF XIII et Ratchet & Clank s’est également invité au sein du service. Mais bon…

Lire la suite..

On March 3, Sean Hannity falsely claimed that "we're going to pay taxes on this bill what for three, four years, before the bill is even implemented." In fact, numerous benefits contained in the Senate bill would become available in the first year after the bill is enacted.

From the March 10 edition of Fox News' Hannity:

HANNITY: The math, it's never added up. And we keep forgetting one important fact here, and that is, we're going to pay taxes on this bill what for three, four years, before the bill is even implemented. I mean, that's like, alright, I'm going to pay -- I'm going to pay off my car for four years, but I don't get the car for four years. And that has not really been talked a lot -- a lot about.

Senate Democrats note "Immediate Benefits" of health care bill. According to a document put forth by Senate Democrats summarizing the "Immediate Benefits" of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the bill includes numerous benefits that would "be available in the first year after enactment" of the bill. Indeed, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein published the following list of benefits that the Senate bill would provide "before 2014":

1) Eliminating lifetime limits, and cap annual limits, on health-care benefits. In other words, if you get an aggressive cancer and your treatment costs an extraordinary amount, your insurer can't suddenly remind you that subparagraph 15 limited your yearly expenses to $30,000, and they're not responsible for anything above that.

2) No more rescissions.

3) Some interim help for people who have preexisting conditions, though the bill does not instantly ban discrimination on preexisting conditions.

4) Requiring insurers to cover preventive care and immunizations.

5) Allowing young adults to stay on their parent's insurance plan until age 26.

6) Developing uniform coverage documents so people can compare different insurance policies in an apples-to-apples fashion.

7) Forcing insurers to spend 80 percent of all premium dollars on medical care (75 percent in the individual market), thus capping the money that can go toward administration, profits, etc.

8) Creating an appeals process and consumer advocate for insurance customers.

9) Developing a temporary re-insurance program to help early retirees (folks over 55) afford coverage.

10) Creating an internet portal to help people shop for and compare coverage.

11) Miscellaneous administrative simplification stuff.

12) Banning discrimination based on salary (i.e., where a company that's not self-insured makes only some full-time workers eligible for coverage.

Obama's plan also provides immediate benefits. According to the House Committee on Education and Labor, Obama's health care plan also provides numerous benefits that will enact immediately after the bill's passage or within the first year, including protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, tax breaks for small businesses, and aid to seniors participating in Medicare Part D. From the House Committee on Education and Labor:

Access to Affordable Coverage for the Uninsured with Pre-existing Conditions

• The President's proposal will provide $5 billion in immediate federal support for a new program to provide affordable coverage to uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions. This provision is effective 90 days after enactment, and coverage under this program will continue until new Exchanges are operational in 2014.

Access to Quality Care for Vulnerable Populations

• The President's proposal makes an immediate and substantial investment in Community Health Centers to provide the funding needed to expand access to health care in communities where it is needed most. This $11 billion investment begins in 2010 and extends for five years.

No Pre-existing Coverage Exclusions for Children

• The President's proposal eliminates pre-existing condition exclusions for all Americans beginning in 2014, when the Exchanges are operational. Recognizing the special vulnerability of children, the plan prohibits health insurers from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions for children, effective six months after enactment and applying to all new plans.

Re-insurance for Retiree Health Benefit Plans

• The President's proposal will create immediate access to re-insurance for employer health plans providing coverage for early retirees, effective 90 days after enactment. This re-insurance will help protect coverage while reducing premiums for employers and retirees.

Closing the Coverage Gap in the Medicare (Part D) Drug Benefit

• The President's proposal begins to fill the "donut hole" by giving seniors a $250 rebate to Medicare beneficiaries who hit the donut hole in 2010.

Small Business Tax Credits

• The President's proposal will offer tax credits to small businesses beginning in 2010 to make employee coverage more affordable.
• Tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums will be immediately available to firms that choose to offer coverage; later, when Exchanges are operational, tax credits will be up to 50 percent of premiums. The full credit will be available to firms with 10 or fewer employees with average annual wages of $25,000, while firms with up to 25 or fewer employees and average annual wages of up to $50,000 will also be eligible for the credit.

[...]

Patient Protections

• The President's proposal protects patients' choice of doctors by allowing plan members to pick any participating primary care provider, prohibiting insurers from requiring prior authorization before and woman sees an ob-gyn, and ensuring access to emergency care. This provision takes effect six months after enactment and applies to all new plans.

Extension of Dependent Coverage for Young Adults

• The President's proposal will require insurers to permit children to stay on family policies until age 26. This provision takes effect six months after enactment and applies to all plans for young adults who are not offered qualified coverage elsewhere.

Free Prevention Benefits

• The President's proposal will require coverage of prevention and wellness benefits and exempt these benefits from deductibles and other cost-sharing requirements in public and private insurance coverage. This provision takes effect six months after enactment and applies to all new plans and all plans in 2018.
• Beginning on January 1, 2011, Medicare beneficiaries will receive a free, annual wellness visit and will have all cost-sharing waived for prevention services.

No Lifetime Limits on Coverage

• The President's proposal will prohibit insurers from imposing lifetime limits on benefits. This provision takes effect six months after enactment and applies to all plans.

Restricted Annual Limits on Coverage

• The President's proposal will tightly restrict insurance companies' use of annual limits to ensure access to needed care, effective six months after enactment for all new health plans. These tight restrictions will be defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. When the Exchanges are operational, the use of annual limits will be banned for all plans in 2014.

Protection from Rescissions of Existing Coverage

• The President's proposal will stop insurers from rescinding insurance when claims are filed, except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact. This provision takes effect six months after enactment and applies to all plans.

Prohibits Discrimination Based on Salary

• The President's proposal will prohibit group health plans from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that have the effect of discriminating in favor of higher wage employees. This provision takes effect six months after enactment and applies to all group health plans in 2014.

The world is going mobile in a very big way. And as people start using smartphones and the new breed of tablet computers to browse the Web, so video sites have to adapt. And so, therefore, does the advertising on video sites.

YouTube’s mobile site is a version of the online video leader built especially for mobile phone users. It isn’t the same as the specially-created YouTube interfaces on iPhone and Android, although users of these two platforms can visit the mobile site at m.youtube.com.

The YouTube mobile site is surprisingly popular, boasting “millions of people all over the world … streaming tens of millions of videos every day.” That isn’t even close to the main YouTube Web site, which now boasts over one billion videos viewed every day.

However, with growth quoted as “over 160% in 2009,” and that likely to rise even higher in 2010, Google is keen to wring every drop of revenue possible out of YouTube as it endeavors to make a profit from the site.

Google today announced it was rolling out advertising on the YouTube mobile site. At least in the U.S. and Japan. The decision follows a trial last summer which was successful in terms of “click-throughs, user experience, and brand awareness.”

Banner ads will now appear on the Home, Search, and Browse pages, but none will yet appear on the actual videos.

Google has been filling the full-fledged YouTube Web site with ads, including overlays and pre-rolls on the videos themselves. But the lack of Flash on handsets and the range of different standards throughout the industry means they aren’t yet available on the mobile site. Google is planning to introduce overlay and pre-rolls in the future though.

With big name advertisers including Sony, Kia, Land Rover, and L’Oreal having already bitten the YouTube mobile advertising bullet, the future looks positive. It seems most advertisers will now want to be present on the mobile site as well as the main Web site.

Which can only aid Google’s effort to turn YouTube from being the online video standard to the ‘profitable’ online video standard. How close it is to managing that is open to interpretation.

Related Ad

Buy ‘Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market’ on Amazon

James Rainey, at the The Los Angeles Times, reports on the "Bay Area News Project" financed with $5 million by Warren Hellman, a local philanthropist.

The project has a CEO with a $400,000 salary and its editor, Jonathan Weber, used to run the Industry Standard, a popular magazine during the dotcom era.

Bay Area News Project has high hopes, few employees - latimes.com

When the Bay Area News Project launches its website in late spring or early summer, it will be just the latest -- and perhaps the most ambitious -- nonprofit venture among a string of similar start-ups.
...
"On the one hand, you want to have big ambitions," Weber explained from his office, a stylish but spartan space donated by a San Francisco law firm. "On the other hand, you don't want to be presumptuous about what you can do with a small newsroom.
...
The project will have to rely on paid interns from one of its partners, UC Berkeley and the Graduate School of Journalism, to provide some of that coverage. The university also intends to bring an R&D component.
...
Weber has committed to covering public institutions like government, education and the law. But he conceded in a recent meeting with freelance writers that even this civic mandate would be an enormous challenge. And with a couple of other editors likely to come on board in a week or two, he's yet to hire another editorial employee.
...
"I think that in some ways we are kind of entering a Golden Age of journalism," Weber said, "because the barriers to entry have been largely removed."

Foremski's Take: The great thing about emerging new media business models, is if one media organization figures it out - we all figure it out - we can all adapt and adopt a similar model. It's win-win.

But I don't see the Bay Area News Project being able to do that, for several reasons:

- The salaries and the organization. The CEO is being paid $400K, and editor Jonathan Weber has wisely declined to publish his salary. I would estimate it to be between $300K and $200K. The salaries of the other journalists will be far lower, and most will be intern level pay because the work will be done by journalism students.

- The non profit model is a problem. The point is to find a media business model that is profitable. There's plenty of 'non-profit' media businesses around, the largest local one is the San Francisco Chronicle.

- A philanthropist led news business is not a sustainable or reproducible model. Mr Hellman has done wonderful things with his money and his interests in the news business are commendable. But the way this venture is set up, it doesn't look like there will be much to be learned, or adopted, by other news organizations.

- This project will compete with local media organizations that are trying to create for-profit news media business models. Having a very well financed competitor, with it's saintly 'non-profit' status will suck revenues away from them.

We need media business models that are viable, profitable, and self-sustaining - without relying on philanthropists, cheap labor from J-schools, and expensive consultants. That's where Mr Hellman's money should be going, imho, to develop reproducible news media business models.

- - -
Please see:

Here is a PearlTree - a visual organization of web pages related to this story:

  
The Bay Area News Project // FAQ

A new convert to nonprofit journalism out west? » Nieman Journalism Lab

Public media workers and aficionados have a new routine: Every Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, they log on to Twitter for Public Media Chat, which is using the #pubmedia hashtag.

The chat, which started about a month ago, is the result of a discussion between a group of public media professionals at PublicMediaCamp in Washington, DC.


"Public Media Chat is something of a passion project for me; for some time now I've recognized the need among people who work in public media organizations to have a way to learn, share, and collaborate with each other," said Jonathan Coffman, a PBS product manager, in an email. "Twitter presents an interesting new way of doing that."

Coffman said a "lively discussion" on -- where else? -- Twitter made him take steps to start building a community and recruit participants. The first chat was held in February.

Coffman worked with Adam Schweigert, new media director at WFIU Public Radio and WTIU Public Television in Bloomington, Indiana, and John Proffitt, who recently started working as the director of digital engagement at KETC in St. Louis, among others, to get the chat off the ground. Their goal? According to Public Media Chat's website, it's three-fold: increase the conversation among public purpose media professionals and supporters; provide a forum for them to come together and collaborate; and test whether such collaborative efforts are worthy of additional investment.

"Honestly, the biggest issue we [in public media] have, and one that I hope we're addressing, is our lack of collaboration," Schweigert said. "Public broadcasting organizations have historically not been very good at working together, and even worse at working with media producers/organizations from outside the NPR/PBS networks."

MediaShift contributor Jessica Clark, who directs the Future of Public Media Project at American University, said, "A lot of public broadcasters are making the transition into social media with no real sense of how it relates to their old skills and practices, and how it might actually serve publics."

Clark said the chat can offer "support, inspiration, and nuts-and-bolts advice."

Chat organizers said previous efforts to foster non-competitive collaboration among public media professionals have failed. Clark said these efforts failed because, in part, "public broadcasters often operate in silos -- i.e., only talking to other radio or TV producers, or only talking within their own industry as opposed to taking a wider view."

Hosts believe that Twitter can help foster a better dialogue.

"Twitter is easy, cheap and platform-agnostic -- anyone who wants to participate in the #pubmedia chat can," Clark said. "It strips down the professional barriers and doesn't require a huge time investment."

But Twitter also has it limits -- a point raised during Monday's discussion. Chris Beer, a web developer with WGBH Interactive, created a Google group in response to some comments about the need to have a discussion without a 140 character limit.

"I'm not particularly attached to the idea of a Google Group or a listserv, I just see a need for more collaboration outside of Monday at 8," Beer said. "Twitter is a fine medium for getting people talking, but I find it difficult to have a conversation, and I hope something like this can supplement the #pubmedia chat. I haven't found a place within public media to ask very practical questions around public media projects. Because setting something up takes all of five minutes, it seems silly not to experiment."

Coffman also points out that, although it is easy to organize on Twitter, the hosts still need to reach out to a lot of people in the field for the chat to have ongoing success.

"The participants in Public Media Chat right now are the early adopter[s] and the big thinkers," Coffman said. "In short order, myself and the other hosts are going to need to start pushing the community to become evangelists and help to spread the movement."


For last Monday's chat, @pubmedia posed four questions and one follow-up to spark conversation. The first question dealt with collaboration. The different responses prompted a follow-up question: "Would you rather collaborate by issues (politics, arts) or job function (tech, journalism, development)?"

The second question asked: "Who does #pubmedia need to listen to? If you could bring one visionary to your station/org who would it be?" It prompted several responses, including what was perhaps the most retweeted response of the night from @eric_adler, who wrote: #pubmedia needs to listen to the public. The next question asked chat participants to name their "last great" public media program, and the final question of the night asked for suggestions for future chat hosts.

You can find raw tweets from the discussion at #pubmedia or look for a roundup on the chat's website. Below are ten of the more notable tweets from Monday night. (Some @replies and hashtags have been edited out.)

• annieshreff I want to get an interactive team to bring reporting from underserved communities to listening audiences. Food/school all good
• publicmediagirl Collaboration requires building relationships, not just tools
• jdcoffman #pubmedia needs the passion of @garyvee, with the entrepreneurship of @guykawasaki, and the evangelism of @scobleizer
• juliaschrenker #pubmedia could benefit from listening to both upstarts and print - often we're between them, with startup challenges + legacy issues
• johntynan Terry Gross interview with William Hurt. Him telling how he was held at knifepoint during a film. The Story Telling!
• ssgowans What was the last great #pubmedia program you watched? Why was it memorable? The War, because it wasn't about celebrities
• publicmediagirl #pubmedia Q3 Am I the only one so far to mention a TV show? What does this say??
• SnarkyJones I want public media that goes back to its non-commercial roots. Kids programs have SO MUCH sponsor messaging #pubmedia
• johntynan: #pubmedia Q4: Kinsey Wilson from NPR
• mediatwit Q4: Y'all are too kind. Happy to guest host w/ or w/o Conan.
• Get Involved

> To participate in future #pubmedia chats, be sure to go onto Twitter on Monday at 8 pm Eastern Time, and do a search for #pubmedia.

> Have your say by writing tweets during the time of chats with the #pubmedia hashtag.

> Check out the PubMediaChat site for roundups of recent discussions.

> Follow the @PubMedia Twitter feed to get updates and alerts on chats.

A writer, reporter and media consultant, Jaclyn Schiff is up at the crack of dawn to tackle the headlines of the day for her job at the non-profit Kaiser Health News. When she should be catching up on sleep, she can usually be found updating her Twitter feed or Tumblr blog, MEDIA Schiff (pun intended). Schiff covers non-profit news for MediaShift.

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The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is once again trying to lure in UK ISPs to help it fight illegal file-sharing on their networks, this time by releasing the results of a study it funded that found ISPs there could earn as much as £203 million ($303.9m USD) by 2013 if they launched a bundled digital music services for their subscribers.

It also said the offering could help ISPs reduce the cost of “subscriber churn,” that a simple 10% reduction could help a big ISP with around 3.5m customers would generate indirect value of more than £20m per year ($30m USD).

“It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe,’” says BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor. “This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs. UK music companies want to innovate and develop exciting new digital offerings. ISPs such as Virgin Media have recognized that legal digital music services offer a more exciting and profitable future than continued widespread piracy.”

It’s ironic that it would cite Virgin Media as an ISP willing to offer digital music services considering the ISP spent years and a staggering eight figure sum developing “Virgin Music Unlimited” only to see it fall apart thanks to last minute by major record labels. Virgin Media later came to an agreement with Universal Music last June, but the service, promised to appear towards the end of last year, is still nowhere to be found, so it should hardly be held up as an example by the BPI.

Further damaging the credibility of their statements is the fact that the BPI tries to suggest that ISPs could make even more from bundled digital music services if only they were “offered to consumers in tandem with meaningful action to tackle illegal music downloading. ”

In other words, if they get on board with the BPI’s proposals to fight illegal file-sharing ISPs could make a lot of money.

In response to the study UK ISP TalkTalk, which claims to be the country’s largest broadband provider with over 4.25 million customers, sarcastically thanks the BPI for its “strategic business advice,” but says the £203 million ($303.9m USD) figure glosses over the fact that it would have to criminalize the behaviors of many of its customers in an ultimately “expensive” and “futile” pursuit.

“Though some may question the value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models and is pressing the Government to criminalize its biggest customers. As it happens TalkTalk does offer a legal download service (emusic), as do other ISPs,” it said in a statement. “Perhaps there is a goldmine for ISPs in legal downloads but that will not alter the fact that the copyright protection proposals being proposed threaten human rights. They will penalize innocent broadband customers. They are expensive, unwieldy and utterly futile.”

It’s silly that the BPI is even offering such “innovative” ideas for others to follow when it can’t seem to come up with any for itself. It’s like getting workout tips from a couch potato.

One has to wonder why people would even want a bundled digital music service when they already have, in the BPI’s own words, more than 35 legal online digital music services to choose from.

The BPI ought to commission more studies that find out what consumers actually want, and try to give it to them. Instead the music industry seems to continue doing the opposite, first figuring out what it wants and giving consumers only what it’s forced to to make a profit, but even then profits are secondary to control of access.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

A few days after the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated in early April 1945, German civilians from the nearby town of Weimar were made to tour the camp, to see with their own eyes what had happened just a few miles from their homes. On one of these days, photographer Margaret Burke-White was present, to record such a visit (see this link; in the above image, that's MBW taking a reading with her light meter). Up until the Allies' armies found the many concentration camps, photographers had covered the war in the usual ways, with the usual imagery. But at the camps, the liberators were staring into an abyss of utter horror, and much to their credit the photographers did not hesitate to record it so that everybody could see. The people of Weimar were made to see. Everybody else, who was not there, was made to see, too - newspapers and magazines all over the world reprinted the photographs taken by Margaret Burke-White and her colleagues.

The other day, after I had featured the work of Isabella Demavlys, a reader emailed me to write "What is the point of this photography and all photography similar to this? It is shameless." And: "Read about? yes absolutely, but seeing? What was going through the mind of the photographer who was watching a man get stoned to death and actually photographed it happening?" I'm probably not the best person to write about this; but I thought I might just give it a shot, having not done this before. I've noticed that occasionally, reservations such as the one by this particular reader are raised, and I'm not always happy with the responses. Needless to say, I don't know whether I can do better. But I can try.

I know quoting Susan Sontag is the thing to do when writing these kinds of articles, but I'll try without. I don't think I'm smarter than her (that's very unlikely), but I want to see where I will be getting without using intellectual crutches. Plus, there's a lot in her writing that I don't agree with.

Let me start out by writing that I don't see photography by Margaret Bourke-White (or other photographers) from the concentration camps described as being shameless. Let's keep that in mind. That said...

First of all, what everybody needs to realize is that many, if not all, of the photographers who record horrendous events experience them more or less the same way we would experience them, if we happened to be there. What was going through the mind of the photographer who was watching a man get stoned to death and actually photographed it happening? Well, the photographer was probably mortified and shocked and sickened just like most people would be. Do I know this for a fact? No, I don't. But I have reasons for saying that. For example, I had a long conversation with Bruce Haley, who recorded how a man got executed with a knife. The photos are on Bruce's website, and he writes: "when he carried out the executions, it was unimaginably savage and shocking - much of the worst of it I did not capture on film..." I also remember having a long conversation with a photographer who had just come back from Afghanistan. He told me he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder - just like the many soldiers coming home from there.

Of course, you could argue that I just managed to speak to the wrong people. Maybe. But I think the assumption that photographers are just like the rest of us and are reacting in basically just the same ways is a good starting point for debates about photography that deeply disturbs us (see Colin Pantall's recent post about a debate centered on images of a stoning).

If you still believe that photographers are somehow different beings, just remember what happens when there is an accident: A lot of people will stop to look, and with cell phone cameras so ubiquitous now, a lot of people will take pictures. The recent explosion in what people now call "citizen journalism" points to the fact that photographers aren't any more "shameless" than the rest of us - which, of course, makes the whole debate a bit uncomfortable, doesn't it? In the end, our aversion to look at horrible images taken by photographers really might just be the discomfort we experience knowing very well that if given the chance we would do the exact same thing, namely to stare in disbelief and horror - and maybe to get our cell phone out to snap a few pictures.

When I see comments like something I read a little while ago, that a photographer taking pictures of a stoning was somehow "collaborating" (it's in here somewhere), on the surface that's just absurd, but deep underneath, it points to a nagging guilt: I see something, and I'm not doing anything about it, so I am a part of this (even if I know that being far away means I can't do anything about it). This is then projected onto the photographer, because that's the only easy and simple step left: To take all our own guilt and to heap it onto the photographer. Problem mostly solved, and whatever residual guilt is still left over can be channeled into writing angry words about the photographer supposedly collaborating.

But make no mistake: The horror won't go away if we don't look. We're not children any longer. We can't make things go away by not looking, by pretending they don't exist. You can entertain yourself philosophically about falling trees and the woods, wondering whether there's any sounds or whether things are really happening if nobody is there to record it. But in the real world, people are starving to death or are being stoned to death or are being killed as collateral damage by missiles raining from the skies (our missiles) - regardless of whether we look or not.

There is no such thing as an innocence here.

So let's turn to the idea of Isabella Demavlys's images (just to use the original example that made my reader email me) being shameless. Are they?

Of course, they are in the same way that pretty much all photography is shameless. That's not a good approach to the topic.

But to decide about whether they're shameless or not, we might want to think about the woman who agreed to have her portrait taken, despite her face being horribly mutilated because of what we call a hate crime. Can we imagine what her life must be like? And if we don't look at her, aren't we then really collaborating with the person who threw acid into her face, to disfigure her and to cast her out from the world - our world? And by "our world" I truly mean the world that includes us, the survivor of the acid attack, and the attacker.

And what about the women who in the future will be victims of such attacks? By refusing to look, aren't we also averting our eyes from their fate?

Of course, as individuals we cannot possibly be concerned about each and every injustice in the world, that would be overwhelming (there's a wonderful article about Peter Singer, a moral philosopher, in the current print edition of the New York Review of Books, which talks about this and a lot more I'm going to indirectly use/apply in the following). But as a society we should be concerned about as many injustices in the world as possible, because the sum of all the different individual contributions and efforts will hopefully result in some real... (may I use this following word, besmirched as it might be by its recent political abuse?) change.

This also means that we need to see all these images that are almost impossible to bear, so that some people in our midst will be moved to act, in whatever way.

But not looking or saying it's shameless to look... It seems to me that there is more morality involved here than just one. There's the morality of looking into the face of someone who had acid thrown at her. There's the morality of all the different efforts that are working hard to prevent such attacks from happening again. There's the morality of not wanting to look at things like that happening because it's just too hard. There's the morality of knowing that no single person can possibly deal with each and every injustice in the world.

It's a lot to juggle.

To focus just on one, and to pretend that one morality is the only one we need to decide - that I find problematic. And I find it even more problematic to solve the problem by blaming the photographer who, in many cases, risks her or his life to bring us images of all the things that we find so hard to look at.

To say that we want to read, but not see... That just seems like an easy way out. Seeing is not the same as reading. What I read about I can file away, because it is being processed while I take it in. What I see - there is a lot of processing, but there also is the unbearable immediacy. We need to experience that unbearable immediacy. It's not about a cheap visual thrill - even though certainly, in this day and age it is often used for that. But even though images these days are often misused for the spectacle, that doesn't mean that we have to toss them aside. We still need to see, and part of that need to see also involves rejecting those who use images for the sheer spectacle, for the ratings, for the profit. That, after all, really is just shameless.

I don't know whether any of this will convince anyone that we must see. It might , or it might not. I'm sure there are lost of aspects I missed, which means I'll have to come back and revise what I wrote. I've felt for a long time that we had to see, and this post is an attempt to put the feeling into words.

Email me to let me know what I missed, what you think needs to be added, etc.

Related: Jim Johnson on the Ethics of Representation