I saw the editorial in Time Magazine by Walter Isaacson about how to save newspapers.
Basically the premise is that newspapers are going under, or cancelling out “good journalism” to save money because fewer and fewer are buying the physical papers but reading the content online for free.
His solution is to get people to pay “micropayments” for reading news-material on the web, a small cost per article or something like that.
Now granted, I agree with him on a number of situations, but I question the methods.
Yes, journalists must be paid to do journalistic work. Naturally.
Yes, newspapers are currently too depending on advertisement companies then their reader because their revenue comes from advertisement. This can create a conflict of interests.
But that’s about as much in agreement as I can be.

I see many problems with starting to charge for online reading of news.
1) It only takes one of two companies to shoot down everybody else. If a few companies doesn’t charge for their content, then people will just go to the free alternatives and leave behind the ones you have to pay for. This is how most online services have worked.

2) Legality. If everybody starts charging, then I’m all but sure that several “gray” providers will pop up. It happens with everything online and it is a problem, but it is also a reality. Gaming, Music and Movie industry suffers from this. Some people spend their free time ripping off content providers and posting it up for free. That would open up for a whole can of “allofmp3” or “piratebay” problems. Charging for content opens up for those doors and the cost of keeping your content yours might prove way to high to be cost-effective.

3) By charging (more) for content, people will likely stop reading a multitude of different providers.
Personally- when I bought newspapers I read perhaps two at the most. Now when I read news online, I read about 8 different news sites. This provides me with a better chance of getting an unbiased picture of events and forming my own opinion. If I were to be charged for the content, I doubt I’d read more than a couple again.
And anybody who’ve seen Fox News for example, knows how unbiased “news” providers can be. I think it’ll hurt.
Now granted, this is also a risk under the current model cause if many providers go bankrupt, you are faced with fewer avenues through the physical medias, but that still mean there are free alternatives online.

4) By charging, you start implying that only those who can afford it, are allowed to read the news coverage. It can quickly create a divided segment where those who can’t afford to go through multiple sites either as in item 3) sticks with 1 or 2 or none at all.

5) Journalism will be much more entertainment then news. One of the arguments was to make journalists dependant on the readers and not the advertiser. Well nice and idealistic goal, but what do we usually see when a content provider becomes depending on its subscribers. Much more populism and sensationalism. It becomes content for entertainment and not enlightenment. These companies will want to attract most people, and well – unfortunately that usually means catering to the lowest common denominator. That will counter the “good journalistic principles” it was meant to promote.

6) Country barriers. If providers start charging online, then they must remember that it is global. I read occasionally US and UK news sites. If I were to pay, would I be allowed to? Or will it be like iTunes where I can only buy from my local store and not from the US or UK store?
The web is global, and the world is as well. But payments aren’t always.

7) Nationally subsidized alternatives. In this country – and many others – we have national supported, public service, channels we already pay for – either via taxes or license fee. Payment we can’t avoid. If we also were to start paying, or pay more, for other content providers, we’re back in item 4. People will leave them behind because they can get their news coverage from the public service channels. It will be a problem for competition.

Now, I do not have the answers – but I would think the way forward would be to offer a split plan. Subscription and free. Subscribe if you want to know more, more in depth articles, forums to talk to the editors and journalists and so on – but keep some content free, if nothing else to lure people into it.
Otherwise it’ll start to spell doom for the majority of content providers in a state we haven’t seen yet. Look at the music industry and how well it fares because they have problems adjusting to a global and intangible reality of the internet – and that is a more physical product which you can keep and take with you. News is much more intangible and fleeting.
Micro transactions on its own? I think it’ll be a big step in bring the industry all the way down, or weed out so we have one or two mega-corporations.

Yeah right. Excuse me while I roll on the floor laughing………. There much better.

Well, apparently the good folk at Gartner have made a study which indicates that the computer mouse as we know it will be gone in a short time into the future (5 years). And it will be replaced by touch screens, facial recognition technology and “wii-type” controllers. Or well – study might be to kind a word; I hope it is just a random person feeling neglected and wanting some media attention (which they are getting for sure).

However this begs the question. The people who have made this study – have they ever worked with a computer. I mean actually worked, and not have a secretary type up all their stuff for them, because how on earth can anybody be that ignorant. Yes sorry, I’m ranting, but I’m flabbergasted.

I work as a programmer (duh), which means I spend large amount of time by the computer each day (bigger duh) and it means I’m navigating a lot of stuff around on the monitor large amounts of the day. And to think, that I somehow would be able to do that by using a touch screen? My arm hurts already. Just imagine all the copy/paste work you do (yes, copy/paste is one of the greatest tools known to man, it rival fire and the wheel), and then imagine having to do that using a touch screen? Yeah, right. I’m about to roll around laughing again.

As long as there is “precision” work to be done, then you need a precision tool for navigation. Just the text work like this piece, and I use the mouse a lot.
And so far I’ve found little which beats the mouse in flexibility and – well – precision and speed. Granted, I wouldn’t want to have to hook up a mouse to my smartphone to navigate that screen, but I rarely need to navigate on such a device like I do on a computer. And I rarely use my phone for 8 hours straight.
Just imagine having to surf around the web for information, doing a little search via search engines, posting a little blog/forum post, downloading some images or buying some stuff from a webshop. Now imagine having to do that for a few hours using touch screens or shaking a controller in the air.

Now the technologies do have their place indeed. But not as a replacement for the mouse – as a complimentary technology for situations where you only need to interact shortly or via screens where a mouse would be impractical; say information screens at the train station or similar. So it is not because I’m against the technologies in any mean, but …..

Anyways, it is a silly study in my book, with absolutely no foundation in reality.
I’ll give up my mouse when the computer can read my intentions, until then I fail to see the mouse being left behind for most of the (office) work on computers – despite how good touch screens, or waving a wii-like controller around in the air, becomes. And facial recognition technology is not *that* good yet.

Some clickity for sources:
BBC NEWS | Technology | Say goodbye to the computer mouse
Computer mouse heading for extinction > News > PC Authority

I saw the clip from BBC News tech program ”Click” about facebook security and was kinda surprised about what they did.

For those who’ve been living under a rock or on the moon or something the last period of time, Facebook is a social networking site – “Web 2.0” buzzwords and all – where people share all sorts of things about themselves. Like so many other similar sites.

I use it marginally myself (link in right hand column), mostly because I’m terrible at keeping in touch with people, so having them “collected” in some service is handy

Anyways, on Facebook you can play all sorts of mini-games and take all sorts of quizzes and people can develop these third party applications for others to utilize.
What BBC did in Click was make an application which could take all the private data you have on your profile and send it to the developers of said application. Now, this is bad enough in itself, but worse – you didn’t even have to use the application yourself, but it would apparently be enough if one of your friends did so, as it could lift data from the friend list.

Now personally I’m a type which drifts between complete paranoia and complete trust 

If I trust a site, I have few qualms about sharing a number of private information, if not – I’ll keep a tight lib about most actual information. But I’m also extremely careful what I install and run and accept – hence I do not fear such applications on Facebook if only I had to run them myself, cause chances are slim that I would anyway.
But if I’m suddenly dependant on my friends not running all sorts of small applications in their facebook time, the danger factor multiplies. Not because I think my friends would run such applications and simply run anything they get their way – but simply put – more factors, more possibilities.

I hope Facebook is on top of this situation and it quickly will go away due to increased security about our personal data.
Otherwise it only takes one or two larger cases of identity theft on facebook to drive many users away and then the entire buisness plan crumbles. 
Personally though, then on top of all this Beacon information sharing, I share next to nothing of consequence on a site such as Facebook which couldn't already be found by searching the web - but I’ve seen many others share much personal information though. It is a dangerous situation waiting to happen lest security is top notch (perhaps it has already happened yet people do not know about it themselves)  

I heard something on the news last weekend which I wanted to write about, but was away from my computer, and thus it isn’t done before now.

A Danish media (www.dr.dk) reported on the 2007-11-04 from a study done in the USA that children/young people had higher risk of increased blood pressure if they spend 2 hours a day watching television.

Now, we’ve heard of the dangers of television for many years, so that aspect in itself was not really enough to make me focus on it.

However the caveat was not actually the television watching itself, but - now this is fun – the fact that the children were sitting still when they did so. (if I could roll my eyes in text, I would)

Now, I don’t know about everybody else, but …. *hmmmm* that sounds odd.

If it is because the kids were sitting still for 2 hours a day, does it actually have anything at all to do with television?
Because from that wording of the conclusion, it would seem to me that they might as well could have said that 2 hours of reading a book a day increases the risk of high blood pressure.  Or sitting outside on a hill enjoying the view for 2 hours a day increases the risk. If you jumped up and done once every hour, would you half that risk, even though you watched TV?
But of course, it would be bad if the media went out and said that reading a book for 2 hours were bad for your health. Imagine the outcries from librarians.

Being a person who enjoys comptuergames, we often in that setting hear the usual suspects being blamed for all trouble in the world – oh, he watched violent movies, or he played violent computer games, so of course he got run over by that car by the drunken driver.

However, I do not understand how television was suddenly implicated into that conclusion, when it was the action of sitting still which was okay.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a link to the study itself, simply a vague reference to Swedish Television, and I did not really feel up to doing the detective work to find it, but either a) the study is populistic and rather useless, or b) the media simply conveys things uncritical and flawed or c) all of the above.

My money is currently on c. :)