[there are five news stories in this post.]
OJR article: NY Times Reporter Has Seen It All Before, and He's Still Pessimistic
by Adam Clayton Powell
OJR [Adam Clayton Powell] interviews ...John Markoff [who] has been writing about computers, technology and the Internet for The New York Times since 1988. Before joining the Times, Markoff covered technology for The San Francisco Examiner and Infoworld, and wrote a weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News. ...
John Markoff [on blogging]: it sometimes seems we have a world full of bloggers and that blogging is the future of journalism, or at least that's what the bloggers argue, and to my mind, it's not clear yet whether blogging is anything more than CB radio. ...give it five or 10 years and see if any institutions emerge out of it. It's possible that in the end there may be some small subset of people who find a livelihood out of it and that the rest of the people will find that, you know, keeping their diaries online is not the most useful thing to with their time.
When I tell that to people ... they get very angry with me ... I also like to tell them, when they (ask) when I'm going to start a blog, and then, 'Oh, I already have a blog, it's www.nytimes.com, don't you read it?'...
journalism.co.uk :: Digital journalism Latin-style
...Buenos Aires will host the 2003 Latin American Congress of Digital Journalism from 29 - 31 October.
The event takes place at the city's Museum of Latin American Art and is organised by Clarín, one of South America's largest media organisations. The corporation's charitable wing, the Noble Foundation, is also supporting the event.
The event is open to all professionals, students, graduates and tutors with an interest in digital journalism. Attendance is free, but applicants are required to apply in writing - students have until 17 October and professionals until 22 October to apply.
Speakers include publishers, journalists and academics from across the Spanish-speaking world, including Anna Garci'a of Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University and Mario Tascon, content director of elpais.es.
Sessions will include seminars on using new technology, developing multi-media content and the role of web blogs in online journalism. Some debates will also be broadcast live on Clarín.com. ..
XML.com :: The Atom API
by Mark Pilgrim
...Atom is an up-and-coming format for editing, syndicating, and archiving weblogs and other episodic web sites. The final details are still being hashed out, but that's never stopped me before, having written several articles about XHTML 2. To understand the problems that Atom is designed to solve, we should look briefly at what came before it...
...WALTHAM, Mass., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Terra Lycos (Nasdaq: TRLY and Madrid Exchange: TRR), the global Internet Group, today announced the launch of Angelfire Elements on Lycos Angelfire (www.angelfire.com), the number one site within the Teens category for teens (ages 13-17) and tweens (ages 18-24). Angelfire Elements give teens a choice of four very affordable subscription packages to meet all of their Web page building and hosting needs in one place. Each one of the packages includes access to Lycos's award-winning Blog Builder(TM) tool.
The new Angelfire Elements subscription plans are based on the table of elements, creating a fun, flashy and very distinct appeal, catering to the hip, tech-savvy Angelfire teen demographic. The four plans -- Ne (NEON), Ar (ARGON), Xe (XENON) and Kr (KRYPTON) -- range in prices from $4.95 a month to $14.95 a month. Each of the new subscription packages gives teens the ability to build and blog with no ads served on their pages...
smh.com.au :: Where websites go to die
...The National Library of Australia is a world leader in tracing the evolution of the internet. But, writes Lauren Martin, with the average life of a website now only 44 days, time and money are short. ...
PANDORA is an archive of Australia's part in a technological leap which, in a decade, has revolutionised publishing. And it is run by a white-haired librarian, Margaret Phillips, with a staff she can count on one fine-boned hand.
The National Library of Australia is a 20th century classical revival building, surrounded by columns on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. More than 500 people work there, but the work of Phillips's five - helped by the technology experts who engineer their efforts and by associates they have trained in a growing number of partner institutions - are ahead of almost anyone in the service of internet archiving.
The Canberra library's PANDORA, begun in 1996, is a model for the massive project by the United States Library of Congress (called MINERVA), and still in its infancy. It may yet be a model for the British Library, where staff tried, a few years back, archiving about 100 sites and then decided it was too hard. It is now making a second attempt.
What's more, the National Library of Australia has spearheaded and continued its digital archiving - not just of websites, but pictures, manuscripts, maps and music - with no new money to do so. In contrast, the US Congress in 2000 designated $US100 million (to be doubled by leveraging it with non-federal funds) for the same job. ...
Phillips is concerned about what PANDORA cannot yet collect: webcams ("because it's an important commentary on how people are using the internet and their attitudes to privacy"); "blogs" (there are now a few on PANDORA), chat rooms, databases, even games. But for now her staff must concentrate on the limited areas of significance chosen in 1996: government publications, academic journals, conference papers, e-journals, and topical sites...
K-Collector