Posting headlines and short summaries stories linked to from other sites.

Media chains settle lawsuit - The Boston Globe

As such, the settlement left unresolved the legal issue that drew the attention of news and technology companies, as well as Internet bloggers: whether news websites - especially aggregation sites, including Google News and Yahoo News - can continue with their current practice of posting headlines and short summaries for stories they link to from other sites.

Under the agreement, Boston.com will be able to refer to stories from GateHouse sites, as it has done in the past, and to manually "deep link" to individual articles without presenting the links with headlines or lead sentences.

No damages were awarded under the settlement, and each party agreed to pay its own legal fees. Neither The Times Co. nor GateHouse admitted wrongdoing.

"This agreement is not binding on anyone else," said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "It has no legal precedent per se. But it could persuade a judge in another case that what Boston.com was doing here was not defensible under fair use" in copyright law.

Ardia, however, described the settlement as a victory for GateHouse. "They seem to have achieved everything they wanted to in their lawsuit except for receiving monetary damages," he said. "It does result in the cessation of Boston.com using GateHouse content as it has done."

In bad times, you’re forced to see if there is a technology” that will help.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/technology/26spend.html

"Penny-pinching shoppers like Mr. Title could have the most
immediate effect on the tech industry, particularly if more people
consider canceling their cable subscriptions to watch video online, or
drop their landline telephones to depend on their cellphones or on
Internet calling services like Skype.

Many consumers appear ready
to abandon the costly desktop computer altogether. Analysts expect PC
sales to fall in 2009 for just the second time in the last two decades,
with desktops falling even faster than they did in 2007 or 2008.

The
only bright spot in the PC industry is netbooks. Analysts at the
Gartner research company said shipments rose to 4.4 million devices in
the third quarter of 2008, from 500,000 units in the first quarter of
last year. Analysts say sales could double this year despite a deep
worldwide recession.

Two lumbering giants, Hewlett-Packard and
Dell, missed the first wave of these tiny, stripped-down machines,
allowing Acer of Taiwan to grab market share. Acer pushed Apple out of the No. 3 spot behind H.P. and Dell as sales soared 55 percent. Dell and H.P. are making the devices now."

It's a natural impulse. You want to write a book.

An E-Z guide to publishing - The Boston Globe

How hard can it be? Rockheaded jocks write books. TV talk show hosts write books. Dogs write books. Why not you?

wake up tomorrow and your hard drive is dead

Dueling data backup firms are rare bright spot - The Boston Globe

"We found that the only thing that sells our product is fear," says Carbonite chief executive David Friend. "The fact that you might wake up tomorrow and your hard drive is dead and all your photos are gone."

Mozy and Carbonite are two of the leaders of the online backup business, a rare bright spot in a gloomy tech economy. Rather than buying their own hard drives to save a copy of their data, consumers and small businesses pay a fee (Mozy's is $59 a year, Carbonite's is $50) to send their information securely over the Net, and have Mozy or Carbonite keep a copy that can be retrieved any time. IDC, a Framingham research firm, predicts that online backup services will generate about $715 million in annual revenue by 2011.

New England Center for Investigative Reporting

New England Center for Investigative Reporting | NECN

NECN is proud to be a founding member of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, a collaborative effort from some of New England's preeminent journalism organizations and Boston University.

The Center was launched in January 2009, with the goal of producing multimedia investigative journalism for print, broadcast and online audiences. The Center gives Boston University students a chance to work with skilled B.U. faculty and the investigative teams at the Boston Globe, Boston.com, WBUR-FM, New England Ethnic News and NECN, to develop local and regional investigative stories.

The Center, a first in the nation, is funded by its partners and private contributions and grants from foundations, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which promotes journalism excellence worldwide.

To visit the center online, donate to the effort or submit your own story ideas for the Center partners to explore, click here or go to www.necir-bu.org.

The Digital Nirvana blog

The Digital Nirvana » About

The Digital Nirvana blog will focus on educating the printing community about how evolving technologies can fuel opportunities for business growth. Featuring authors from WhatTheyThink.com, prominent industry analysts and other thought leaders, it will be the catalyst for a lively exchange of the most current thinking and a variety of viewpoints.
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Terrific contributors ! Important Topics.
imho, Dave Mainwaring, UncleDaveM_IFM