Now Read This: Some News Clippings

Mobile Phone for Dogs from Technoism.com

Sound Bites Are Getting Way Smaller

A couple of months ago (I think) on his blog New York based venture capitalist Fred Wilson mused that he’d like to get his news through Twitter: short, sharp, relevant, urgent. His company, Union Square Ventures, has investments in some of the new companies subtly and quietly changing the nature of the media, often in an intelligent way — the bookmarking service de.licio.us, and local news portal outside.in as well as twitter — and now he can.

Twittering turns a person into a human geotag, generating text-message-like thoughts, directions and comments. Now there’s ReportTWITTER.

Ever thought that your Twitters should become publicised just like the articles you pen every day? Or that your editors would respect you that tad more if they knew how you got hold of that crucial information? Guess what, we have a proposal for you. Sign up on our Twitter platform dedicated to reporters:

Let the world experience first hand how you go about your reporting. From the minute you think of an article idea until you hit the ‘publish now’ button.

Use your Twitters to set up interviews. Just twitter about the necessity of the interview and invite the candidate to your personal .article in progress page. and set the scene for a lively interaction.

Message other ReporTwitters and swap proofing favors, tips.

Your work might be spotted by news editors on the lookout for talent in your part of the world.

Home Page. reporTWITTERS

For an example of the kind of story that might be compiled from twittering, read Angelique van Engelen’s story “We Almost Know What The Voice of Money Sounds Like” published on Global Politician, based on The Economist’s index of what a Big Mac costs in various parts of the world, and ‘crowdsourced’ opinions for her essay about tracking people according their tastes and shopping habits, with reference to William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition.

New Book Reports on the Media

Phillip Adams’ “Late Night Live” on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Radio National is a national treasure. There’s always the feeling that we’re eavesdropping from the next table at a fantastic, provocative wide-ranging dinner conversation between people fascinated by one another. As a podcast it has a national audience. This week don’t miss Phillip’s conversation with journalist and television producer David Salter about his book “The Media We Deserve: Underachievment in the Fourth Estate” which begins this way: “The Print and Broadcast material we consume every day is diverse, perverse, distracted, uneven, shallow, logically inconsistent, infuriatingly opportunistic, often crassly commercial, insufferably pretentious and rarely witty. But it is also generally competent and occasionally very good indeed. Trying to untangle that knot of contradictions is the task that occupies the pages ahead.”

MySpace Experiments With Advertising

MIT’s Technology Review reports that the social networking site is drawing from users’ profiles for an “interest targeting” experiment that’s in its first phase:

… culling likes and dislikes from its users’ pages to sell ads in 10 broad categories such as finance, autos, fashion and music.

MySpace advertisers can now get much more than the basic demographic data contained in site registration forms, Peter Levinsohn, who heads Fox Interactive Media, told an investor conference.

The site has more than 3 million users in each category and can place ads based on responses to questions about users’ likes and dislikes, favorite movies and music. Data is even extracted from blog entries, where users write at length about their lives.

Oliver Sacks, Writer and Neurologist Brings His Storytelling Skills to Columbia University

At the beginning of September the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks was named as an artist in residence at Columbia University.

Attracted by his breadth of interests, ranging from schizophrenia to music, Columbia University has appointed Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and writer, as its first Columbia artist, a newly created designation. The new appointment will allow Dr. Sacks, the author of 10 books and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, to range freely across Columbia’s departments, teaching, giving public lectures, conducting seminars, seeing patients and collaborating with other faculty members. Many of the details of his appointment have yet to be worked out, but among other things, he will be teaching in the university’s creative writing department as well as at the medical school.

His newest story for The New Yorker is on amnesia and music.