"…the silent readers are very active members of the community. They just make decisions not to make themselves visible in the permanent online space"

Internet getting you down? Tired of reading tales of doom and disaster? Ever wanted to cheer yourself up by looking at floofy kittins? Of course you have. And now you can! With this little bookmarkelet that replaces all images on the page with pictures of kittens.

Circulation figures for UK national daily newspapers for July 2009

"…in the hands of a more capable investigator, it’s possible that the information underneath all of the Tweets, Facebook updates, Flickr comments, etc. that I am broadcasting everyday could reveal a lot more that I would want to share.

"Brands must have a kick start plan to be successful with their community.

"Taking responsibility" falls on their ears as "taking the blame". In their experience, this is adding insult to injury – taking the heat after taking the loss. It's too much to take according to them.

"We concluded that the routine publication of these pages and the nature of the articles strongly suggested a commercial arrangement existed between the newspaper and the advertiser and that the advertiser exerted a sufficient degree of control over the content of the articles to warrant the term 'advertisement feature' or the like being placed above the articles".

Worth reading. Fascinating to see how the UK compares when it comes to pricing of mobile broadband.

"…the students went through a three-day intensive workshop, called Ready…Set…Blog! Fellow CUNY Graduate School of Journalism student and Local intern Lois DeSocio and I developed the curriculum and led the workshops."

"The common form of news storytelling that evolved in print journalism over the last century was shaped by not only the technology and scarcity of print, but also by consumption patterns that differed from what we're seeing today."

"In the 36 hours after securing the Michael Jackson footage, Us Weekly was able to cut the video down to a minute and 35 seconds, secure advertisers (the video was embeddable by any user, carrying with it a pre-roll ad), warn Ooyala — which used Akamai as its CDN — about the incoming load, and sync up with that week’s newsstand release. In the meantime, Ooyala readied its adaptive bitrate streaming to ensure that video views were uninterrupted by demand or bandwidth issues."

"Can we get a feeling for the audience the event is being amplified to? Are there members of that audience who seem to be a member of the community but aren’t really known to the community? Can we find the lurkers and pull them in with a personal invite (and is this even ethical?)"

Sony's e-book reader and Amazon's Kindle have attracted a great deal of attention during 2009. However, the devices still suffer from proprietary file formats and digital rights management technologies, which along with price, are limiting their adoption and will drive them into the Trough of Disillusionment.

"So, news at 3%, and lets assume "the rest excluding spam and babble" – about 57% – has about 1/6th relevance (a figure derived by a quick count on Tweetdeck) gives about a 10% signal, the rest is pretty much noise. A lot if it is diverting noise of course, and herein lies the problem – poor filtering!"

"…if you want your boss to commit to using social media and/or launching a blog, you need to show them how their business will benefit from doing so."

"Online advertising as we know it today would be dead for sure. Consumers ignore it, publishers don't need it anymore, and the ad world is struggling to get it to work with any amount of efficiency, so we'd have to completely rethink how to engage a consumer online."

"Chi has identified one model that Wikipedia's growth pattern matches. "In my experience, the only thing we've seen these growth patterns [in] before is in population growth studies – where there's some sort of resource constraint that results in this model." The site, he suggests, is becoming like a community where resources have started to run out. "As you run out of food, people start competing for that food, and that results in a slowdown in population growth and means that the stronger, more well-adapted part of the population starts to have more power.""

"As news organization try to figure out new business plans, they can’t afford not to give more attention to the estimated 149.1 million American women (or more than 3 billion worldwide). News organizations really cannot wait until they figure out how to make money before they woo women readers — because by then, many of them will be lost to the blogosphere."

"The saga has certainly proved disastrous for Dawson Holdings. Since the bulks story emerged in public it has all but exited the newspaper and distribution market."

"One change in particular is that a whopping £10 saving will in future be possible when paying application or search fees on a patent application, if filing electronically."

"Very few technologies (if any) have 2 year hype-to-mass-adoption curves, we all know that, yet time and again people let themselves be persuaded that this time, it will be different."

"I’m not an IP lawyer or even music copyright lawyer (yet), but I’d certainly thought things through enough that when I made a recording of my own music a few years ago I got an assignment signed by the session musicians I’d used (who’d been paid a fee for their services)."

"Personally, I consider that forcing or bullying people into disclosing their user / password details in order to access personal accounts is a step too far in the privacy invasion stakes. I await the outcome of the cheerleader's resulting claims against the school with interest."

"What has tended to happen in journalism schools, from what I can gather, is that teachers teach students about what it was like in the past when newspapers defined news, instruct students on how to write like it was back then, and then try to bring students up to speed on the complexities of the current situation."

"I figured that a frequent health care user as smart as Stephen Hawking would probably have an opinion on the subject of "Death Panel" medicine, so I went on his Web site and sent him an e-mail asking him about it. "

The model cannot predict whether a piece of content will go viral before it has been released; only its likely reach once it starts spreading. And the researchers think their approach to modelling should apply to information spreading via social networking sites and other online services as well as email.

"In this regard a couple of reports on enterprise and social networking / Web 2.0 are of interest."

"We're putting together a map of UK blogs. Add yourself – or a blog you know."

Nine staff have been sacked from their local authority jobs for snooping on personal records of celebrities and personal acquaintances held on the core database of the government's National Identity Scheme.

"…the result is wrong – people just don't use web sites in the way that the majority of their Lordships seem to think they do. Who's going to go through all the pages of a site carefully, really? Or realise that there's additional vital info that's not on the site?"

"All things considered though, the Mail's new comment moderation policy is an excellent idea. It doesn't mean no moderation at all, so any legal issues are likely to be dealt with pretty quickly, and the overall effect should be to make the website stickier."

"Mail Online is following Express Newspapers’ lead, which stopped moderating on its Daily Express and Daily Star sites over two years ago and relies on users to flag problems."

"But to be secure a media operation must entice an audience to enjoy what the web cannot supplant, a paid-for exclusivity and an opportunity for a unique participative experience."

"People are prepared to pay for online content when they get value from it. This might be because they trust it (why else pay for Which? content when you can read reviews at TestFreaks or alaTest). Or it might be because it’s the only way they can access certain content."

"When we consider the technicalities of getting income from the consumer, the secret may not be HOW to get people to pay for news, it’s WHEN that counts."

"No – we are not contemplating a pay wall, nor as far as I’m concerned would we ever….they are a stupid idea in that they restrict audiences for largely replicable content. Murdoch no doubt will find this out – even rudimentary maths suggests he will struggle with a completely free model to meet advertising revenue levels across the NI offerings."

"Play crosswords with your friends anywhere, anytime."

"The connection is that the activity of LA gangs – the way they form, grow, operate and interact – can be modelled by WoW. The same is true for the actions of insurgents and terrorist cells."

"It seems The Guardian is considering launching a members’ club of some sort as part of moves to increase revenue, an idea that was also mooted by the New York Times a few months ago."

The transatlantic cables changed communication forever, but the businesses that made use of it, in aggregate, were worth much more than the business of owning the cable.

"Facebook’s news stream will benefit from FriendFeed’s real-time expertise. "

The Norwich-based publisher Archant has announced a 61.1 per cent fall in operating profits for the year up to June 2009, despite a rise in digital revenues.

"Play crosswords with your friends anywhere, anytime."

"The connection is that the activity of LA gangs – the way they form, grow, operate and interact – can be modelled by WoW. The same is true for the actions of insurgents and terrorist cells."

"It seems The Guardian is considering launching a members’ club of some sort as part of moves to increase revenue, an idea that was also mooted by the New York Times a few months ago."

The transatlantic cables changed communication forever, but the businesses that made use of it, in aggregate, were worth much more than the business of owning the cable.

"Facebook’s news stream will benefit from FriendFeed’s real-time expertise. "

The Norwich-based publisher Archant has announced a 61.1 per cent fall in operating profits for the year up to June 2009, despite a rise in digital revenues.

"The portrayal of the news media in the Harry Potter series of books may have a significant impact on children's understanding of journalistic integrity or journalism as a career, according to a study by Baylor University researchers."

"Online journalism that you can charge for has to be either very good or very useful, and just being good probably won’t cut it for long either. There is too much excellent material that is free and will remain so."

"Hackers from Russia may have attacked Google, Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to silence a pro-Georgian blogger, it has emerged "

"Price is determined by the UNIQUE value your product provides TO THE CONSUMER."

Digital Competitiveness also found that the younger age group are more willing to pay for offers of better quality and service.

What would Times Online look like if it were Digg? Like this? Hopefully not with the awful advert on the right-hand side.

"Visitors to UK newspaper sites look at an average of 2.5 pages a day, according to data from Alexa. But 62.8% of users look at just one page."

Business demands ROI, and a culture shift is taking place as more businesses use Twitter for advertising and promotional purposes. It’s ok to be blatantly commercial as long as you’re providing value.

An interesting shift occurred in 2008, the report said. For the first time, consumers spent more time with media they paid for, like books or cable television, than with primarily ad-supported media, like newspapers and magazines.

"Smokescreen is a game about online identity, trust, and privacy. Launching in September…

"This game measures how your reaction time is affected by external distractions. Regardless of your results, experts say, you should not attempt to text when driving."

"When someone watches a video you create for the first time AND they meet the advertiser's demographic requirements, you get paid."

“People worry that it will break if they roll up a device and dump it in their bag.”

"Here are some of the non-advertising revenue opportunities we’ve identified, along with a few creative new ad units that look promising."

"Almost 300 companies in the advertising and broadcasting sectors went out of business in the year to the end of June, according to research."

"…here are some tips about how to avoid your hack looking like this unfortunate baby rhino."

Runs DNS queries

"….he has therefore agreed that emails he sent to TM's director of corporate development, Phil Machray, should be published."

"Hussman said the paid content online generates just one-tenth of 1 percent (0.1 percent) of the newspaper's total revenue. But the newspaper has been very successful in keeping print circulation up in part because the newspaper is not giving all its content away for free."

"I think people are struggling to figure out what content people will actually pay for, but I think this is one of several examples of the type of frictionless transaction methods that might work."

"Getting online users to pay for content online (whether by mandatory payment or voluntary donation) works best when you hit the user at a time when he or she already is in payment mode, which of course is no easy task when the user is reading news for free online."

"I’d estimate 60 percent of our revenues come from sponsoring events, with the rest split between advertising and events we host ourselves."

"Marburger compared my article and the Gawker posting and concluded: "This is what in our opinion is a huge contributor to the demise of those who are originating news reports. If you don't change the law to stop this, originators of news reports cannot survive." "

"I think that the internet’s own culture and best practices should form the bedrock starting for thinking about how fair use should opperate in the digital era."

"Boasting giant page views and unique visitors means very little when those you are driving to the site are not sticking around, using it or returning."

"…Chinn said that numbers alone (straight tallies, such as unique visitors or time spent on site) are not very useful for measuring engagement." <— Couldn't agree more and one of the reasons I think ABCes tell you very little that is useful about your readership.

"Almost half of Americans (46%) say they tend to ignore Internet banner ads. Much further down the list are Internet search engine ads (17% of people ignore), television ads (13%), radio ads (9%), and newspaper ads (6%)."

"…until publishers and editors figure out how to identify and engage their readers and make money off of that traffic, aggregators are more a distraction from the real crisis than the cause of it."

"I don’t really read the NYTImes beyond the technology section. But I’m guessing that the top performers in the news room, say the best 5%-10% of the writers and editors, produce 50% or more of the real value of the newspaper. The hungriest reporters. The best writers. The most competitive and aggressive editors."

"The estimate in the Cabinet report for the original project was that it would initially take 7 months i.e. until March 2006. In its current modified scope the project was scheduled for completion in October 2008 and then revised to complete by March 2009. It is now expected to complete in August 2009."

"…though Tracer only launched on March 1, clients already include Politico, the New York Daily News, Hearst Corp., Time Inc., The Wall Street Journal, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette."

"On average, US traffic is 36.8% of the UK traffic (ie there is just over one US visitor for every 3 UK visitors). The figure for the Telegraph is slightly higher (44.5%) and for the Mail it’s a massive 62.5%"

"Whatever your personal opinion about U.S. copyright law and how it should apply on the Internet, judges who consider the question are obliged to weigh four standards of fair use, including the extent of republication, whether the reuse is itself unique, and how it all affects the commercial market for the original content."