Macedonian bloggers and other new media users offered their own responses to the question “How internet changed your life?”, posed in an article [MKD] on BBC's Macedonian language site.

Darko Buldioski of Komunikacii.net applied a style figure reminiscent of Slavic antithesis to rephrase the question into “If I had no internet…” and posted the following answers:

I would not have…

• …been able to write on my blog, in which I invested much and got much in return :)
• …known that BBC covers this topic, as I don't listen to radio news, I read it all online
• …met a bunch of excellent people with whom I regularly communicate about different subjects
• …ordered various trinkets that my brother transports for me when he comes from America (it's supposedly cheaper there)
• …worked on what I do now, because my work is about Internet.

Linking to the relevant South Park episode - “Over Logging” - Buldioski also invited others to share their thoughts.

Dozens of Twitter users offered their opinions via the hashtag #danemaseinternet [MKD] or “If there was no Internet”…

• …I would have to carry a notebook with me like [the author] Venko Andonovski to record my thoughts [- Sead93]
• …by God I would have dealt with scientific research and as a result I would have found evidence to disprove the Theory of Relativity [- goranmitev]
• …I would never have discovered what life on a farm is like [- lazyvlad]

…and a number of them blamed the internet for not being in shape, lack of muscle mass or excess fatty tissue.

Marjan Zabrcanec considers his blog Golemata slika (The Big Picture) and his Twitter and Facebook profiles his “loudspeakers” for exercising his right to the freedom of speech. He explained [MKD] that he opened his first e-mail account 15 years ago, and that without internet he would not have known “which topics and arguments are used by debaters from all over the world. Research would have been tremendously hard. Now, there's Debatopedia,” and would not have been able to effectively manage his NGO, or offer cheap but powerful internet marketing campaigns for the clients of his current employer.

Vasilka Dimitrovska reckoned [MKD] that without Internet she would have never learned how to blog and use new media to “detect, present and protect cultural heritage,” and influence the public opinion, including appearing on TV.

…I would have remained just one more archeologist in the sea of unknown and anemic archeologists in Macedonia without any attention from the society, and with even less respect.

Ribaro (The Fisherman) responded via a vlog post, with audio in Macedonian and English subtitles.

Viktor Arsovski wrote [MKD] that without Internet he probably would have continued to teach English, and not take part in the founding of IT.com.mk, and…

• I would take our media “for granted,” and not read information from other sources.
• I would have never known that some things in the society can improve.
• I would not get frustrated by watching football (soccer) on [Macedonian TV] Sitel. Now by watching online streaming I know there are quality anchors who explain about the sport instead of talking nonsense. Therefore, even though it sometimes makes me nervous, at least I know that the Internet offers me a choice!

Bloggers who posted on this subject also included Kihu Potru [MKD], who emphasized the Internet's importance in sharing art and establishing connections between artists - from visuals to haiku; Kuzmanov [MKD]; Martin [MKD]; and Dzaman [MKD].

Finaly, some people responded through comments on blogs of others, like Oksimoron, who said [MKD]:

If there was no internet… I would have walked around more, I would have been a better housewife, and would not look silly laughing alone in front of the monitor :-)

Nadezhna said [MKD]:

- I now read more books, and they are much cheaper :)
- Someone listens to my voice (reads my blog).
- The Internet helped me to get a job.

PRoom noted [MKD] that without Internet:

…would not have enrolled into post-graduate studies (found over the Internet)
- I would not have stayed awake till 5 in the morning
- I would not have known many of my current friends
- I would not have been able to book a hotel in Nice
- I would not have been able to surprise my loved ones who are far away with gifts
And for certain I would not have known that one day the Internet will die [MKD] ;)

You know those special amps used by Spinal Tap that go to 11, in order to provide "that extra push over the cliff"? It appears Fox News has gotten a hold of some and hooked them up to its coverage of health care reform.

As the reform bill moved closer to a vote in the House, the Fox News noise machine went into overdrive, hurling every false and misleading claim it could muster.

The week in Fox News health care hysteria began with an oldie-but-goodie -- Steve Doocy, Bill Hemmer, and Bill O'Reilly all claimed or suggested that the bill will, in O'Reilly's words, "require American taxpayers to fund abortion." But it doesn't, at least not beyond what is currently permitted under current law. Fox News, unfortunately, is not alone in repeating this falsehood.

Then, Doocy and Hemmer, joined by Neil Cavuto and several other hosts, jumped on the idea that a legislative procedure the House is reportedly considering to pass the Senate's version of health care reform would allow them to do so without a vote. Wrong again -- the House would need to vote to implement that procedure.

Carl Cameron, however, broke through the noise on this issue, pointing out that the process would simply pass the bill "in one vote instead of two" and that the process "has been used, literally, for centuries" -- indeed, Republicans made copious use of the "self-executing rule" when they controlled Congress. Even Charles Krauthammer conceded that it's constitutional. Still, that didn't keep Alisyn Camerota from scoffing that the rule "might as well be a self-immolating rule."

Fox News then pounced on a survey claiming to have found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform passes. O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and contributor Dr. Marc Siegel all portrayed the survey as having been published by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Except it wasn't. The article was written by the physician-recruiting firm that conducted the survey, and it actually appeared in an employment newsletter produced by the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine, not the Journal itself. Further, the survey itself was not all that scientific -- done via email contacts taken from the recruiting firm's database -- so any claim that the survey's results accurately reflect the view of the American medical community is dubious at best.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly did eventually note that the survey was "not a scientific poll." But that didn't keep Glenn Beck from insisting -- hours after Kelly corrected the record -- that "The New England Journal of Medicine says that if this bill is passed nearly one-third of doctors will quit practice medicine."

(Beck, meanwhile, is keeping up the long tradition of Fox News hosts pushing partisan political agendas by joining with Republican Rep. Steve King to promote an anti-reform rally in Washington.)

Fox News contributor and serial misleader Dana Perino made her own non-contribution to the health care debate, asserting that the reform bill's Medicare investment tax on those making over $200,000 a year is "so disturbing ... because the people who make that money are the small business owners." In fact, fewer than 1.3 percent of small business owners would be affected by the tax.

When the Congressional Budget Office released new numbers detailing how the reform bill would reduce the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years, Fox News didn't want to talk about that -- it spent far more time highlighting how much the bill would cost instead of how much it would save. And when that didn't seem to work, it tried to discredit the CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable. Never mind that when the CBO issued "favorable" numbers last fall on a Republican health care reform plan, Fox News praised the CBO as "nonpartisan."

The Fox News spin is even confusing its own hosts. Brian Kilmeade can't quite comprehend how a bill can cost money yet reduce the deficit, and Kelly admitted, "I don't understand anything they're talking about when it comes to this potential law."

Fox News' inept war against health care reform, while in keeping with its function as the communications arm of the Republican Party in exile, is making itself look like the Spinal Tap of news. It doesn't really need that "extra push over the cliff" -- after all, that's what it's been speeding toward for years.

At this rate, it probably won't be too long before a Fox anchor spontaneously combusts.

A whole lot of shaky earthquake claims goin' on at Fox

How much does Fox News oppose health care reform? It's pretending natural disasters didn't happen if they're inconvenient to the anti-reform agenda.

On March 18, Doocy took exception to President Obama's statement that a provision in the health care reform that would help Louisiana cope with Medicaid shortfalls resulting from Hurricane Katrina might also help Hawaii because it "went through an earthquake. "Hold it. What Hawaiian earthquake?" Doocy asked. "There was an earthquake in 1868 that killed 77. There was an earthquake in 1975 that killed two." After noting that the provision applies to states that have suffered a natural disaster "within the last seven fiscal years," Doocy added: "Essentially it boils down to just one state, and that is Louisiana."

Doocy seems to have forgotten that there was an earthquake in Hawaii in 2006. Not only did it cause tens of millions of dollars in damage, the Bush administration "declared a major disaster exists in the State of Hawaii and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts" as a result of the quake.

But Doocy didn't need to rely on federal agencies for information on the quake -- Fox News reported on it at the time. (Investor's Business Daily similarly ignored its own reporting to suggest there was no recent Hawaii quake.)

It seems that rather than trust the federal government or his own news organization, Doocy chose instead to trust right-wing bloggers, who were spreading the misinformation. That runs counter to a 2007 memo -- issued after Doocy and other Fox hosts falsely claimed that Obama was educated in a madrassa -- in which Fox News vice president John Moody reportedly wrote, "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC."

Media Matters has written Fox News requesting that Doocy correct the record. We shouldn't have to, since Fox News is supposed to have a "zero tolerance" policy toward on-air mistakes, but then, these are the same folks that ludicrously insisted that a Fox & Friends graphic in which poll numbers added up to 120 percent contained no errors.

The latest right-wing witch-hunt target: Jim Wallis

Fox News has long been a leader in witch hunts against Obama and his administration (or, really, anyone who can be remotely tagged as liberal). Now Glenn Beck, as an extension of his repeated challenged Beck to a debate over social justice, Beck demurred, his vaguely threatening statements making it clear his witch hunt was more important than reasoned debate: "In my time, I will respond. ... Just know the hammer's coming. ... And when the hammer comes, it's going to be hammering hard and all through the night, over and over."

Right-wing website WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, blundered into the breach with a poorly written article that attempted to put words in Wallis' mouth. WND claimed that Wallis was a "champion of communism," even though Wallis has declared communism to be a "failed" system; asserted that Sojourners has published "a slew of radicals" while ignoring that it has also published a slew of conservatives; and alleged that "Sojourners' official 'statement of faith' urges readers to 'refuse to accept [capitalist] structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class,' " even though the word "capitalist" -- inserted by WND -- actually appears nowhere in the statement. WND even falsely claimed that Wallis "labeled the U.S. 'the great captor and destroyer of human life.' "

Somehow, we suspect that Beck's upcoming assault on Wallis will be just as divorced from reality as WorldNetDaily's.

Erick Erickson joins the "scumbags" at CNN

Should a blogger who once called a retiring Supreme Court justice a "goat f---ing child molester" be rewarded with a regular commentary gig on CNN? Doesn't matter -- the deal's been done.

CNN announced this week that RedState editor Erick Erickson has joined the network as a political contributor, mainly appearing on John King's new show. The network claimed that Erickson is "a perfect fit" for King's show, adding that "Erick is in touch with the very people John hopes to reach."

Media Matters has detailed Erickson's history of outrageous statements, of which the aforementioned is but one.

Predictably, conservatives defended Erickson's new job, his fellow RedStaters among them. One of Erickson's RedState defenders, however, went a tad off-message: "From Non-Conservatives, to Academics and Liberal Elitists, to self-soiling and unprincipled Professional Politicians and firmly-entrenched good ole boys inside the M(ostly) S(cumbags) M(edia), each of these clowns has a tale of doom about the hell we're headed for compliments of CNN's hand basket."

We have to wonder: Does Erickson consider his new CNN colleagues to be "scumbags"?

This week's media columns

This week's media columns from the Media Matters senior fellows: Eric Boehlert examines the media myth of Obama's "falling poll numbers," and Karl Frisch tells you how to annoy Glenn Beck in five minutes or less.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg

Media Matters maintains active online communities on the nation's leading social networking sites. Be sure to join us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg and join in on the discussion.

Media Matters Minute now on YouTube

For some time now, radio shows and stations throughout the country have been carrying the Media Matters Minute, a daily, minute-long recap of our work topped off with the "most outrageous comment" of the day. We encourage you to subscribe (YouTube / iTunes /RSS) to the Minute's daily podcast, hosted by Media Matters' Ben Fishel.

This weekly wrap-up was compiled and edited by Terry Krepel, a senior web editor at Media Matters for America.

Musicians, DJs and authors to reveal their favourite hangouts

Have your say on the Travel blog

HiFi is the best rock'n'roll bar in NYC.The room is covered with empty album sleeves and the juke box is hands-down the best in the city – I believe there are about 3,000 albums on it, so you can't complain about them not having your song. There is a fantastically affordable happy hour and a great local crowd. Like the rest of the East Village, it can get a bit much on weekend nights, but most of the time it's my favourite bar in town.
· 169 Avenue A, +1 212 420 8392.
Craig Finn, lead singer of the Hold Steady

The entrance to the Pegu is an unassuming doorway on the south side of West Houston Street. It's only when you are up the stairs that the glory of this place hits you. It is like going back to the great clubs of the 20s, when the staff were pretty and jazz and cocktails ruled. On a recent visit, two amazing Django Reinhardt-style guitarists were swinging through 30s classics. Cocktails are taken seriously here – the art of proper, classy drinking is almost a motto. At the weekend it can get pretty busy as it is becoming the "in" place.
· 77 West Houston Street, +1 212 473 7348.
James Pearson, artistic director, Ronnie Scott's, London

It was a balmy night in September when I visited Po' Monkey's juke joint. It's a ramshackle hut powered by a single cable in the tiny town of Merigold, deep in the Mississippi delta. A poster on the door warned: "Bring your liquor inside but not your beer." The walls were cluttered with posters and age-old postcards, while toy monkeys swung from the rafters. It was low lit – smoky but inviting, with beer and whiskey flowing freely. Terry "Harmonica" Bean took to the tiny stage, elbow to elbow with the crowd, and delivered a mind-blowing, foot-stamping performance that will stay with me forever. Delicately soulful cries came from his ageing gruff voice, while stupendous bluegrass melodies oozed effortlessly from his antique steel guitar. This was raw blues at its authentic and spine-shivering best.
· +1 662 514 7488, 15km from Cleveland.
Dan Hipgrave, co-founder of Original Music Company (originalmusictravel.com), which launched this month and specialises in music-themed holidays

The Spirit Store in Dundalk, County Louth, is on the edge of town beside a small harbour. There's a small, friendly bar downstairs which opens around 4pm, but it is the live music upstairs that is the main draw. You would be hard-pressed to find anywhere as welcoming to an artist and more genuinely music-driven in its programming of events. That's why I keep going back there to play, and why many other artists who have outgrown the 120- or so capacity venue keep returning. So many venues and promoters are about the money but Derek Turner, who books the music, is driven by something much more.
· +353 42 9352697.
Duke Special, musician. His DVD box set, The Stage, A Book & the Silver Screen is out now

Not exactly a venue, not exactly a bar, entrance to Trishas/The Hideout/that door on Greek St (as it is variously known), is obtained by boldly knocking on what appears to be the entrance to a flat above a shop, striding through a starkly lit corridor and down a flight of stairs, before mumbling an explanation to the owner as to why you don't appear to be in possession of a membership card – having accidentally put it through the washing machine normally does the trick. Inside, you'll find a cupboard-sized, candle-lit cavern which can be hired out for private music showcases. But stumble in unannounced after hours on a weekend and you might also find a doo wop or jazz band sandwiched into the corner between the usual crowd of transvestites, metropolitan hipsters and veteran Italian locals.
57 Greek Street, Soho, London.
Krissi Murison, editor, NME

I first played at this blink-and-you'll-miss-it shed in the tiny village of Brawby back in 1998. It only held 64 people and we scraped our legs on the front row's knees. It has since moved to Hovingham village hall, though it retains its name. The man behind The Shed, Simon Thackray, has presented events from the Fish and Chip Van Tour with a trombonist, to mixed media knitting installations – saxophonist Lol Coxhill playing free jazz in a skip to coach trips for folks in knitted Elvis wigs touring sites of Elvisian interest in Ryedale. My own band, Hank Wangford and the Lost Cowboys, started a tradition of Christmas gigs at The Shed, where we play morose songs and have a riotously miserable time. The Shed was the inspiration for my village hall tour around Britain, which I am currently writing up as a book. And, after 235 villages, The Shed is still the loony best.
· 01653 668494.
Hank Wangford, writer and musician. His CD, Whistling in the Dark, is out now

For me, the greatest gig of 2009 was at A38, a huge old ship that used to lug coal up and down the Danube. The lower deck is now a state-of-the-art live music venue, but bits of engine room equipment are still there. Even though the boat is held down in dry dock by 100 tonnes of concrete, the bottles still jingle on the shelves of the bar when the parties get wild. The booking policy is great – they've had cutting-edge electronic artists such as Ikonika, Dorian Concept and Foreign Beggars play recently. And nothing compares with the signature dish of the restaurant on the upper deck: rooster stew, complete with the crest and testicles of the bird.
· +36 1 464 39 40.
Mary Anne Hobbs, Radio 1 DJ. Her show is broadcast on Thursdays 2-4am

Wild At Heart is a whisky-soaked, no-nonsense rock'n'roll joint in Berlin's old anarchist district, Kreuzberg: a seven-nights-a-week venue painted blood red, crammed with Elvis memorabilia, Hawaiian gods and a lifetime's supply of hard liquor. For 15 years it has presented bands from all over the world – mostly punk, rockabilly, psychobilly, 60s garage and surf. I spent a memorable evening there talking to TV Smith from the Adverts and another with Wreckless Eric, both of whom started out with punk label Stiff Records in 1977, and I've played there with my band, the Flaming Stars. The music's loud, but the welcome is friendly, and the club also runs the Tiki Heart cafe and clothes shop next door, where you can eat, drink and kit yourself out in a spectacular variety of rock'n'roll clobber.
· Wienerstrasse 20, +49 30 610 747 01.
Max Décharné, singer in the Flaming Stars and author of A Rocket in My Pocket: The Hipster's Guide to Rockabilly, to be published by Serpent's Tail in June

Mesa de Frades in Alfama, the oldest district of Lisbon, is the sort of place you dream of hearing fado, the traditional soulful Portuguese music. A tiny converted chapel with tiled walls, it is full of locals and quality performers booked by owner Pedro Castro, a great guitar player. You can come for the music, which starts late – around 11pm – or book a table and come for an excellent dinner beforehand. A couple of years ago I sat here watching Carminho, the amazing young fado singer who is now the talk of Lisbon. When the music starts, the doors are shut to enclose the tiny performing space. It's what fado in Lisbon should be, but so rarely is.
· Rua dos Remedios 139A, +351 91 702 9436, mesadefrades.com. Booking is essential.
Simon Broughton, editor of Songlines magazine (songlines.co.uk/musictravel)

In the heart of Turin, off Piazza Statuto, you'll find the best of all worlds: from Wednesday to Saturday Il Folk Club plays host to Italian and international jazz, folk and world musicians. How this Italian institution – legendary in Turin for over 20 years – has remained generally unknown to travellers and music junkies outside Italy is a mystery. Alongside its regular programme, Il Folk Club is also the launching point for Radio Londra, a monthly mini-festival which fuses British musicians such as Jim Mullen, Kit Downes, Brandon Allen and Quentin Collins Quartet, with local stars such as Mario Pozza, Enzo Zirilli and Dado Moroni. The bar is simple – one central room with space for about 150 people, exposed brick walls, and a stage – so the focus is always on the incredible music.
Via Ettore Perrone 3, Turin.
Sam Sollai, buyer and events coordinator, Ray's Jazz at Foyles

This little neighbourhood bar used to have a green door with panes that rattled when you opened it, but it has now been replaced with something more solid, partly to keep the sound in. It's run by Mar and Nacho, both dyed-in-the-wool culés (Barcelona supporters), and nights there are long and loud. You can hear Sam Lardner, an American resident who plays his own fusion of flamenco and bossa nova, or wonderful classical and flamenco guitarists like Daniel Figueras and Pedro Javier Hermosilla, or the Covers Project, with frontman Philip Stanton. The eating and drinking are delicious too – Galician-style octopus, traditional meatballs, pimientos de padron (small green peppers), and wine for not much more than a euro a glass. A great night out in the Alta Zona.
· C/ Ivorra 24, Sarria, Barcelona, +93 203 4988.
Rupert Thomson, author living in Barcelona. His latest book, This Party's Got to Stop, will be published on 8 April

Salta, in north-west Argentina, is well-known for its folk music heritage. This has given rise to the creation of pena, which roughly translates as a place where musicians and music lovers come together. Seven nights a week you can experience this at La Casona. The venue's five colonial rooms are filled to the brim with musicians, professional and amateur, folk, jazz and others, locals who come down from the Andes bearing pan pipes and drums, and some foreign visitors, all coming together to jam the local tunes. As a musician, I found great comfort in the fact that this kind of place exists in the world. And of course, many people come simply for the music.
· La Casona del Molino, Caseros.
Lizzie Ball, violinist and singer. She will be performing – and launching her album – with Machaca at La Linea Festival in the Purcell Room on London's South Bank on 27 April

The first time I asked a taxi driver to take me to Havana's Salón Rosado de la Tropical back in 1989 he said it was a place for Cubans, not foreign tourists – and certainly not lone women – and I'd better watch out as it could be rough. He'd obviously never been inside this mecca of Cuban dance music, where all the top bands play regularly, testing their latest material in front of the sexiest dancers on the island. In Cuba, most music venues are geared to tourists and too expensive for ordinary Cubans, who are often not allowed in anyway. Not so the Salón Rosado. This is the closest you can get to hanging out with a Cuban clientele. Dedicated to the memory of Beny Moré, Cuba's touchstone band leader of the 1950s, it started out life a Spanish cultural centre at the beginning of the 20th century. These days there's a balcony reserved for tourists overlooking the dance floor where, if you're lucky, you may rub shoulders with the musicians as they gather for the gig. Although today reggaeton and hip-hop dominate street tastes, Salon Rosado continues to offer a window on to the latest music scene and is a dancer's dream.
· Avenida 41 esq. 46, Nicanor del Campo, Marianao, +53 7 203 5322.
Jan Fairley has been travelling to Cuba since 1978 and is writing a book on women and music in Cuba

Leading Japanese venue Liquid Room has been going for about 15 years and hosts weekly bands and DJs from Japan and around the world. The website may say it closes at 12, but the last time I played there, as The Orb, they didn't let us out till 6am. There's a beautiful cafe upstairs and the friendly enthusiasm of Tokyo clubbers has to be experienced to be believed. The last time I played there I took a bag of Space Dust (the sweet!) which made me very popular.
· Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, +81 3 5464 0800, liquidroom.net.
Alex Paterson, co-founder of The Orb and HFB, his new project. HFB's first three EPs are available from 12 April on Malicious Damage Records

Lagos is not your classic tourist destination; it's a prohibitively expensive city of 14 million people and a crime record to frighten even the toughest traveller. But Nigeria's notorious capital does have one musical landmark worth going the extra mile for: the New Africa Shrine. It's named after the legendary club run by the late musical activist Fela Kuti, which was razed by soldiers. Fela's daughter Yeni and her musician brother Femi have built up a nightclub that can hold thousands and has live music throughout the week. It's not for the faint-hearted, but the Shrine is probably the safest place in Lagos: it has its own police force. You'll get a warm welcome, and hear some of the best live music in the region.
· Pepple Street, Ikeja.
Rose Skelton, music and travel journalist specialising in West Africa

• Bars and clubs
• United States
• New York
• Ireland
• World music
• Budapest
• Hungary
• Berlin
• Germany
• Lisbon
• Portugal
• Yorkshire
• Argentina
• Havana
• Cuba

I never did use a Baby Monitor in my house, but if I did, I would definitely want to use the Sikker.

The Sikker isn’t like the ones that are essentially over-priced walkie-talkies. At least, that’s what they were several years ago. I’m sure that mobile technology has improved since then. Anyway, what makes the Sikker different from other baby monitors is that it comes in the form of two wristbands.

One band is for the baby, and one is for the parent. They are synced wirelessly together, as they are to the base station. The parent can use his or her bracelet to monitor the baby’s temperature, or remotely play music for the baby via the radio. I don’t see why an SD slot could not be added for MP3 tracks.

Hey, the Sikker (Danish for “safety”) is still a concept for now, so who knows what it is capable of? Why, I venture to say that maybe they will make it so those bracelets will float in air on the base station.

Of course, I can think of a problem with this already. What if your little baby doesn’t want to have a bracelet on? That sort of shoots your baby monitoring system all to heck, doesn’t it? I guess you could cuff (perhaps too strong of a word) the bracelet to a bar on the baby’s crib, but you won’t get the temperature reading.

Source
Check out the Coolest Gadgets 2008 Gift Guides, Christmas shopping made easy.
[ Legend of the Sikker copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Kevin Nakao is VP of Mobile & Business Search for WhitePages, a Top 40 Web and Mobile Publisher. You can find him on Twitter, and on the Whitepages Blog where he writes about mobile, local, and social media.

While last year’s SXSW seemed to serve as the “coming out” party for location-based services (LBS), maybe this year’s conference signifies the migration of these platforms into mainstream culture. And perhaps the only real “new” concept to emerge this year is the idea that there is finally a real opportunity to make money via “location.”

Here are five things that companies should consider as they look to utilize location-based services (LBS) as part their mobile strategy.

From finding the nearest ski slope on REI’s Ski and Snow Report to a nearby movie on Flixter, there are plenty of Top iPhone applications that have incorporated a “lead with the offer, not the capability” philosophy into their mobile product offering to provide a better service. Build the best service first, then add the bells and whistles.

With all the hoopla surrounding location, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that location’s real appeal to advertisers is the fact that with this functionality, you can reach the on-the-go user, who is ready to buy and consume. Just because Twitter and Facebook offer location doesn’t make that valuable or new to advertisers. Location-targeting via IP address has been around a while. For the same reason radio is a great advertising channel for retailers, LBS advertising is also valuable: because it can reach the consumer near the point of sale.

Foursquare has clearly emerged as the location darling. Consider the fact that after only one year, they’ve reached 500,000 active users (Foursquare recently tweeted they added 100,000 users in 10 days).

However, if you apply any city’s share of the total U.S. population, the results show some pretty low estimates of Foursquare users in individual localities. What emerges is a very “long tail” — a steep, narrow graph — of local user adoption. This shows why it is important to achieve scale if you hope to see return on investment in the location marketing space.

For example, using these rough estimates of a city’s proportional share of the U.S. population, if a local pet supply store wanted to target people in San Francisco, the estimated reach would be 1,310 Foursquare users. Even if you double this audience estimate, the number is fairly small for even a local marketer. We had to hit around 4 million downloads of the Whitepages iPhone app to achieve the minimum scale needed for advertiser geo-targeting. Today, 80% of our campaigns from major brands are geo-targeted.

Editor’s Note: It’s important to remember that these are just rough estimates. Because Foursquare was initially only available in a handful of major metro areas, the geographic distribution of users may not precisely follow the geographic distribution of the population.

Battery life is the single biggest threat to location. With GPS on, the phone is asking the network where it is, and this chatter can drain battery life — anyone with an iPhone knows what I am referring to. Thus, phone manufacturers will play a critical role in the future of LBS. RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerry devices, faced this problem early on with the energy-tax of e-mail polling, and as a result, their devices now have some of the best battery life.

Foursquare has helped us move forward here as well. “Check-ins” help to address the issue as they offer efficient geo-triggers without having to keep battery-draining GPS features on at all times.

Looking forward, I predict the mobile platform wars will be fought with location and maps. This is an important feature that a platform can use as a point of differentiation for consumers and developers.

In anticipation of that battle, Apple purchased mapping company Placebase, and Google is starting to provide unique mapping features like turn-by-turn navigation on its Android devices. The only hope I see for Windows Mobile is if they do something completely revolutionary on the mobile location front. A development like this was alluded to at the recent TED conference with its augmented reality layering of geo-tagged Flickr photos and real-time video integration.

At WhitePages, we monetize our mobile services through a mix of premium, national display, and sponsored links for local business. Our effective CPM (revenue per thousand ad impressions) for sponsored local links is $30-$50 — double the effective CPM (eCPM) rate we see for premium display ad campaigns from national brands. The eCPM multiple of local targeted ads over ad network rates is a staggering 10x.

Location-based inventory will also become scarce as Apple recently announced that iPhone apps will not be permitted to access GPS capabilities for advertising alone. There now needs to be some consumer benefit and functionality in order to access a user’s location. Geo-targeted inventory on mobile will continue to be at a high premium with no excess supply or ad networks to drive it down.

It is my hope that by this time next year, SXSW –- the festival of “emerging” music and technology –- will have finally moved on from location. It’s clearly happening now, and if integrated wisely, location will be making companies too much money to be called the “cool kid on the block” any longer

- 9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing
- 10 Foursquare Apps You Can Use Right Now
- 6 Foursquare Apps We’d Love to See
- 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare
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[‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Andrew Vanden Bossche. It looks at the unexpected moments when games take us behind the scenes, and the details of how game design engages us. This time -- how emotional design can make us think about not thinking about violence.]

Senseless violence in videogames is fun, but more importantly, it can also be intellectually stimulating and thought provoking. While designers and critics alike cry out for more depth in games, pathos is not the only path to artistic merit. For a medium that's constantly patronized, misunderstood, and derided even by its supporters, sometimes satire and irony is the best way to get a point across.

This is the philosophy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, as the most unapologetic of that series so lambasted by those who were the target of the game’s satire. The ultraviolent and candy colored Vice City is an excessively pink world in which violence is comical and cartoonish. Violence in this game is already highly desensitized. Pedestrians die, but after their bodies despawn the world will be back to normal as if nothing happened, maintaining the status quo like a TV serial.

It's the worst possible environment for a serious engagement with issues of violence, but it's a great environment to engage with how we depict violence. Most games take the opposite position of Haunting Ground, and are designed to soften, justify, or excuse violent actions so that players feel like heroes instead of murderers.

It's the same treatment summer blockbusters get. But unlike most of these media, Vice City goes a step further. This is a game that mercilessly skewers the groups most opposed to its existence, freely leaps into self parody, and satirizes the cultural attitudes towards violence that ultimately gave it form. By the end of Vice City it's clear that everyone from the mob to the talking heads on the radio are guilty of the same violence as the protagonist. No one in Vice City is innocent, and neither is anyone in the world.

How to Take the Sense Out of Violence

While technology makes blood and gore more realistic, game designers continue to construct this violence to minimize its impact. In the goriest of games (like Mortal Kombat) violence is there to thrill or disgust, not to inspire existential terror. Designers (and gamers) get excited over realism, but we want it for specific reasons. Despite how much we clamor for realism in graphics and physics, emotional realism actually gets in the way of enjoying games like Grand Theft Auto.

For this reason GTA4 has actually been criticized for being too realistic. GTA4 succeeded in its attempt to be more serious and taken more seriously, but it resulted in a different game experience--one that many fans hadn't been looking for and subsequently found in the much less serious Saints Row 2.

GTA4’s Nico feels more like a person than the caricature that is Vice City’s Tommy Vercetti, and for that reason it can be hard for players to engage senseless violence. Even the normal missions feel a little odd considering the sheer number of people you kill, creating a scenario in which the gameplay and story don’t quite mesh.

Abstracting Emotion

Trauma Center is an interesting example of a game that uses abstraction to eliminate squeamishness. This is a game inspired heavily by medical dramas with surgery-based gameplay. Medical dramas have a wide appeal; exposed organs do not. Surgeons and other medical professionals have to get used to blood and guts, but most people are pretty squeamish about that. Even the bloody fantasy violence of the average videogame can be less intense than the exposed entrails of a living human. Because of this, the designers went to great lengths to create a representation of the human body that wouldn't be grotesque.

Naoya Maeda, the lead 3D and event designer said on the Trauma Team web site that he came up with this abstract approach while thinking of how a surgeon would see the entrails. What's interesting about this approach is that the more realistic option may be less "true." In the game, the player is a doctor and revulsion is not part of the experience. In the same way, Tommy Vercetti attitude towards human life is pretty obvious from the way pedestrians are depicted.

A World of Mannequins

In violent videogames, it’s common to dehumanize the enemy so that players can feel justified in killing them. Zombies, robots, and aliens all serve their roles. With human opponents, it’s common to make them as evil as possible, which may be why WWII is the favorite FPS genre and Nazis the favorite foe. Ultimately though, the greatest tool for removing humanity is simply to leave them undeveloped.

The civilians in GTA don’t mourn, cry, or express themselves. Because they don't exhibit sympathetic actions, it's hard to empathize with them. They exist only to run screaming like Godzilla was stomping through the city. Vice City is inhabited by crash test dummies that respawn endlessly no matter how many times they die. It’s similar to watching Bugs Bunny gets blasted point blank with a shotgun: the next second, he's up and chomping carrots.

No matter how many times the player dies in GTA, or however many generic citizens he wastes, everything in the world will be respawning and back to normal in minutes. In this way, actions that would normally appear reprehensible loose all their emotional impact. If GTA was an accurate murder simulator, depicting the horror of real-world violence and murder with unflinching accuracy, the nightly news stories would have been about kids getting PTSD.

Sensitive Violence

If there is a flaw in this form of violence in videogames, it’s that it isn’t violent enough. It’s emotionally casual, designed specifically to not challenge the player’s feelings of empathy or guilt. Although it takes a lot of design work to make sure the player won’t feel sorry for the extras, seeing how many pixilated crash-test dummies you can run over isn’t emotionally challenging for the player.

Haunting Ground has a near-opposite outcome, but the design is obviously quite intentional. Compare GTA to the visceral Manhunt, and you can see that Rockstar is quite capable of creating an experience uniquely tailored to inspiring certain emotions. That’s a game that really does make the player feel like a murderer.

So Vice City is engineered for players to be as violent as possible without thinking about it. This is where a lot of game stop, having accomplished their purpose, and just let the player have fun. But Vice City fills the game with relentless satire, and this cleverness works in part because it's so violent. The result is a game about thinking about not thinking about violence.

Whose America?

The talk radio blabbering about videogame violence is underscored by the incredible violence perpetuated by the player. With Tommy Vercetti chaining rows of exploding cars and fighting everything from SWAT to the US Army, the irony of legislating against bleeding pixels isn’t lost on the player.

The jingoistic ads run by the game's gun stores unsubtly implicate that GTA is not the cause of America's attitudes towards violence, but a product of it. The entrepreneurial rise of the main character reflects a certain pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-attitude that, along with this construction of violence, satirically constructs Tommy Vercetti as an ideal American.

Vice City is violent videogame about America’s attitude towards violence. Vice City came out after GTA 3, and it was born while the immediate reaction to that game was fresh in the minds of its audience and opponents. As the in game talk show parody unfolds, extremists from all sides fight over which vision of America to cram down the rest of the country’s throat while the player is laughing at them and having a grand old time.

While the guests on talk radio worry about fictional violence, their world is being blown up by the player on a regular basis. After mowing down the city in a tank, players may wonder why they aren't the ones being discussed on the news. Shouldn't they be thinking about real violence? Shouldn't the player? It's fun to live the American Dream as Tommy Vercetti, but is this bitter satire worth bringing to reality?

Even though Vice City goes to great lengths to create emotionally uninvolved violence, it wants the player to be conscious of how different this is from real world violence. At the time, the charge levied against the playerbase and the industry was that videogames confused the two. With the pitch perfect satire of radio pundits and activists, Vice City invites the player to think about whether the game is more damaging to society than the people trying to ban it. Rockstar has a clear agenda, of course, and stacks the deck in their favor. Even so, that’s a lot to think about for a game that’s not supposed to be about thinking at all.

Pathos certainly has its place in videogames, and it's certainly something we need more of. A GTA like game that forced players to confront the realities of murder would be an interesting idea. It couldn't work as a satire, and it wouldn't really be fun, but that’s just fine as it’s another way to engage the player. One of the great things about survival horror games like Haunting Ground is that they've proven that games don't necessarily need to be fun to be compelling.

But let's not underestimate Vice City just because it makes us laugh.

[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, which is updated less often than this message, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com]

Filed under: Sedan, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, GM, Police/Emergency

Charting the Five-Ohs: Next-gen Cop Car Comparo originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

With a possibile vote to finalize passage of health care reform approaching, Fox News has thrown everything but the kitchen sink to rally opposition, with guest host Laura Ingraham proclaiming, "Let's kill the bill." For example, Fox News personalities have portrayed the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as unreliable, falsely claimed that a 2006 earthquake did not occur and attacked an 11-year-old and his family that support reform.

Ingraham on hosting for Fox News: "Let's kill the bill!" Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham posted the following message on her Twitter account: "I'll be hosting the O'Reilly Factor on Friday, 8pm eastern. Let's kill the bill!"

From Ingraham's March 19 post on her Twitter account:

Beck encourages viewers to hold candlelight vigil against health care reform. Glenn Beck asserted: "It is time that you have a candlelight vigil. You peacefully assemble in front of your Congressman's local doors. You go to his office locally, not to Washington. You gather your friends and you stand there, you sleep there. You make sure the press covers a peaceful assembly of people saying, 'We will remember your name 'til the end of time, sir.'" [Fox News' Glenn Beck, 3/15/10]

The Fox Nation highlights "call to arms" in opposition to health care reform. On March 18, The Fox Nation published a headline, "Alert: Jon Voight's Call to Arms - Come to D.C. Sat. to Oppose Obamacare."

Fox & Friends channels GOP on "facts that people need to know" about health care reform. Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy announced: "So the Republicans have put out some facts that people need to know about this." Fox News then displayed images under the heading, "GOP: What you need to know. Facts on the Dem health bill." Doocy continued: "For instance, they say, what they're not talking about is the fact that there's going to be a new Medicare tax on capital gains." [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 3/19/10]

Cavuto promotes weekend coverage tilted toward conservatives. Your World host Neal Cavuto has promoted his upcoming "Health Care Showdown: What's really up Doc?" coverage, which will air on Saturday, March 20. Cavuto will host conservative radio host Mark Levin, Rep. Jason Altimire (D-PA), Dom Imus, and Mike Huckabee. Cavuto also promoted Friday's Your World guests, including Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), conservative radio host and columnist Jeri Thompson, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and Republican candidate for California governor Carly Fiorina.

Fox hosts Gene Simmons to bash health care and promote his insurance company. During Fox News' America Live, host Megyn Kelly hosted K.I.S.S. front man Gene Simmons to discuss health care. During his appearance, Simmons called health care reform "horrific" and promoted his life insurance company.

Fox falsely attributes doctor survey to New England Journal of Medicine. Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity and Marc Siegel all pushed the false claim that a New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) survey found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform legislation passes. In fact, NEJM says they didn't publish or conduct the 3-month-old email "survey," which was actually conducted by The Medicus Firm and published in an employment newsletter.  

Fox News erases 2006 Hawaii earthquake to attack Obama. Responding to President Obama's statement during a Fox News interview that Hawaii "went through an earthquake" and could benefit from a health care reform provision that would help Louisiana cope with Medicaid shortfalls resulting from Hurricane Katrina, Doocy asked, "What Hawaiian earthquake?" In fact, as Fox News itself reported at the time, President Bush declared a "major disaster" after Hawaii was hit by a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in October 2006. [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 3/18/10]

Beck attacks family of 11-year-old who spoke about his mother's death at health care event. Following 11-year-old Marcelas Owens' appearance at a health care reform event to speak about his mother, who reportedly died after losing her health insurance, Beck asked, "Where was grandma" when Marcelas' mother was sick and attacked her work with the organization Washington Community Action Network, saying the group was "all about economic, racial, gender, and social justice for all," which he called, "pesky phrases." [Fox News' Glenn Beck, 3/15/10]

Fox calls CBO score untrustworthy. After the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the health care reform reconciliation package would reduce the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years, Fox News -- led by Beck, Hannity, Doocy, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer and The Fox Nation -- attempted to portray the nonpartisan CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable. By contrast, after the CBO gave a "favorable" score to the GOP health care plan, Fox praised the office as "nonpartisan" and advanced false GOP claims about the CBO's findings.

Fox News suggests Dems were bought off to support health care reform. Dick Morris suggested that Obama "illegal[ly]" nominated Rep. Jim Matheson's (D-UT) brother Scott "to a judgeship with an implicit quid pro quo." Rep. Matheson's office and the White House have called the smear "ridiculous" and "absurd," former Bush-appointed judge Michael McConnell definitely debunked the smear and conservatives have stated that Scott Matheson is "plenty qualified for the job." Likewise, following Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) appearance on Fox & Friends to discuss his decision to support the bill, Fox News displayed a graphic stating: "What was Kucinich promised? Congressman changed vote from no to yes."

Fox anchors falsely attack House rule as undemocratic. Fox News anchors, during their self-described daytime "news hours," repeatedly forwarded the false suggestion that by using a legislative procedure known as the "self-executing rule" to finalize health care reform in the House, Democrats would be passing health care reform "without actually voting for it." In fact, passing legislation by using the procedure would require a majority vote. Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich criticized the rule as "incredible" and "passing bills without voting on them," despite the fact that the Republican Party "set new records" for its use of the self-executing rule in the years following Gingrich's ascension as Speaker.  

Fox repeatedly inaccurately reported on abortion funding. Doocy, Hemmer, Kilmeade, Bill O'Reilly, Carl Cameron, Dana Perino and Greta Van Sustren pushed the debunked claim that the Senate health care reform bill contains language that would allow federal funding for abortion beyond what is currently allowed under federal law. In fact, the Senate bill -- which will be considered by the House -- prohibits health insurers from using federal subsidies to pay for abortion services restricted by current federal law.

Hemmer perpetuates debunked health care myth: "Could people be going to jail for not owning health insurance?" Hemmer revived the debunked myth that not buying health insurance "could lead to prison" and asked: "Could people be going to jail for not owning health insurance?" In fact, the penalty for failure to purchase insurance is a tax, not jail time, and willful failure to pay taxes of any sort can result in civil or criminal penalties.

Perino misleads on Medicare tax impact on small businesses. Guest hosting on Fox & Friends, Perino trumpeted the myth that a Medicare investment tax on those making more than $200,000 would affect most small business owners. In fact, fewer than 1.3 percent of small business owners would be affected by the tax.

El Multimedio de Comunicación “Motor de Ideas” informó en una conferencia de prensa que ingresó a la Red Mundial de Comunicación y que en los meses de abril y mayo le sumará a su portal, agencia, revista y diario urbano una radio FM y Televisión por Internet.

Boy, is that one of the longest product names that we've come across so far - the iHome iP39 Kitchen Timer and FM Alarm Clock Radio Speaker System for iPhone/iPod. As though there isn't enough iPod or iPhone speaker docks to go around already, iHome adds to the crowd with the iP39, where it comes in a mixture of stainless steel and black, enabling it to fit into most modern homes without looking like an eyesore. You have dual alarms that allow you to wake up to your favorite tunes on your iPod or subject your ears to the random tunes of the local radio station via its FM radio. Apart from that, dual kitchen timers help you keep track of two dishes simultaneously, ensuring your guests do not end up with a burnt lunch. Would you fork out $99.99 for the iP39?

Permalink: iHome iP39 Kitchen Timer and FM Alarm Clock Radio Speaker System for iPhone/iPod from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

Les Blumenthal / McClatchy Washington Bureau:
State of the health care debate: Talk radio attacks an 11-year old  —  WASHINGTON — Conservative talk show hosts and columnists have ridiculed an 11-year-old Washington state boy's account of his mother's death as a “sob story” exploited by the White House and congressional Democrats like a …

I caught up with Kieran Hannon the other day. He was in the Bay Area for a meeting with the Irish prime minister (he's on the board of Enterprise Ireland) and I realized it had been a good few years since I had last seen him.

He used to be co-managing director of Grey Advertising, then had gone off to Texas to work as VP of Marketing for Radio Shack, and then moved to Santa Monica, in Southern California. He's now working as COO at a promising startup called Sidebar, which has an interesting mobile technology that recommends content based on what people like, very useful for online retailers and others.

Kieran and his family had spent 18 years living in San Francisco, and I was curious what life in Southern California (SoCal) was like.

He said life was good, and that the startup scene was healthy and that there are a lot of media/technology centers there. I often write about how Silicon Valley has become Media Valley, because of all the media companies here (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, etc) so it makes sense that SoCal, with its rich media history, would be a fertile breeding ground for media technology startups.

Earlier this week, Mark Suster, a VC based in SoCal, wrote an excellent post about startups in LA. Want to Start a Technology Company in LA?

He makes some great points:

...LA [is] the second largest city in the country with a population if 16 million. We have universities like Caltech, UCLA, USC and many more. We have many seasoned entrepreneurs who have built successful companies here and made a lot of money for investors and themselves. But LA is not Silicon Valley and we don't need to aspire to be so. We will never be Silicon Valley in the way that Toronto will never be Hollywood. But we have a great city for building technology companies.

He goes into details about how LA is not like Silicon Valley.

- Funding is different, there are smaller "A" rounds of around $3m rather than $10m here.

- Recruiting is different. There aren't huge pools of engineers, but it is possible to build 100+ sized teams.

- Commuting isn't as bad as people think it is, most people live close to where they work. And hey, commuting isn't that easy here.

- Lots of content creation skills. This is an interesting point to make because software engineers can be found almost anywhere in the world today, but content creation skills are very culture specific, you can't outsource this work.

- There are now larger numbers of successful entrepreneurs, many are on the their second and third successful company.

Here are a few success stories:

There is a lot of innovation happening in LA from places like Eqal, Deca.TV, DemandMedia's studios, Clicker, Filmaka and other initiatives.
. . .
The whole category of "sponsored search" came from a successful LA company, Overture. (my firm, GRP Partners, was an investor). LA produced Applied Semantics that created AdSense and was bought by Google. We were also an investor in the early local listing company, CitySearch - an LA company. LA was a leader in lead generation (LowerMyBills), comparison shopping (PriceGrabber, Shopzilla), social networking (MySpace ... I know, I know - Facebook won - but it was still a big business). If we extend a bit North up the coast line we have many affiliate marketing innovators including ValueClick, Commission Junction and FastClick. They also produced GoToMeeting and CallWave.
. . .
A great team from MySpace has created Gravity. Gil Elbaz from Applied Semantics has now created Factual. Zorik Gordon is tearing it up at ReachLocal. TechCoast Angels backed GreenDot should be a major IPO this year. Frank Addante has created Rubicon Project. Douglas Merrill, the former CIO of Google, is building his next company in LA. Scott Painter, founder of CarsDirect has created two new generation LA startups (Zag and TrueCar, both backed by GRP Partners). Brett Brewer (ex MySpace) has AdKnowledge, there is Adconian, Legal Zoom and many more. Hautelook, Gogii, Magento - all very high potential companies building in LA.

Mr Suster is one of the organizers of Launchpad LA V2, which was announced today. This is a project aimed at helping first-time entrepreneurs and helping to educate them and guide them in building successful companies.

We will be selecting 10 startup companies to participate. There is no cost but you must physically be based in or move to Los Angeles for the 6 months of the program. Applications are due April 6th, 2010, the form is on the website and the Twitter address is@launchpadlad

A West Coast corridor of innovation...

It won't be long before we have a West Coast corridor of innovation stretching from Silicon Valley to Southern California, and beyond.

In fact, if you fly from San Diego heading north along the coast you pass over tons of innovation centers:

- The communications and biotech industries of San Diego;

- The electronics industries of Orange County;

- The media centers of Hollywood and Santa Monica;

- Then you reach San Francisco/Silicon Valley with its electronics, software, media tech, biotech, cleantech industries;

- Then Portland with its thriving startup scene plus Intel's big presence there;

- Seattle with a thriving tech scene mostly spun out of Microsoft, and Amazon;

- Vancouver and its software industry.

Wow. 1400 miles of innovation. There's no other region like it, hundreds of miles of world-class, industry leading, innovation and creativity.

Interestingly, it's all built on top of one of the most unstable fault lines in the world. A disruptive reality. Is there a connection?

I've always said that innovation has to be disruptive otherwise it's not innovation.

This is the fanciest first aid kit I've ever seen! MacGuffin Films made this one up with everything they might need for a location shoot for about $235 total, not including the $55 Husky case. In addition to bandaging cuts and scrapes, this kit can ease almost any ailment that would delay filming. Parts list after the jump. Photos by Nathan Rosenquist.

• Toolbox: First aid
• Geiger counter/weather radio & first aid kit