Following up on a previous post I guess there’s yet another thing to be mentioned in subjects like free vs. paid media. According with an Associated Press report mentioned at editorweblog.org it seems that some news websites, Southeast European Times and in North Africa are basically sponsored by the US Army and they are designed to counter what the Pentagon considers misinformation circulating in the international news media. Well it’s a free media world, as such I totally agree with such tactics, but meanwhile I have to be circumspect related with the whole news content published on that site. The article mentioned before, US Army: controversial payments to reporters overseas, has pretty much the same conclusion: The Pentagon’s use of the web sites has raised questions about blurring the lines between legitimate news and what some may consider government propaganda.
Top 15 Firefox Extensions
As more and more people are switching to Firefox here is a PC Magazine Top 15 Firefox Extensions list.
Gmail Invites
It seems Dragos is right and Gmail is preparing for graduation since I see more and more Gmail users in the last couple of days getting 50 or more invites to give away. I got them too, so if you want any, drop me a line.
Press freedom in US
A survey published in USA Today gets to a rather weird conclusion (at least i would say so): one in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted.
The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get “government approval” of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys “too much freedom,” not enough or about the right amount, 32% say “too much,” and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
I just hope this is not the deep belief of the new generation and is just a lack of education which will be soon corrected.
Via e-bi
Top 10 influential brands in 2004
In the survey of almost 2,000 ad executives, brand managers and academics by online magazine Brandchannel.com Apple ousted search engine Google from last year’s top spot, but the surprise to many will be Al Jazeera’s entry into the top five.
Ikea still remains the first one in Europe followed by Virgin.In the third position in Europe there is a new entry in the top five, yet another swedish company, the clothing retailer H&M. On the fourth, the world’s leading cellphone maker, Nokia. In fifth position another (this time I would say surprisingly) new entry: the arab news network Al Jazeera, which managed to come in ahead way much bigger competitors like BBC or CNN.
The full results of the survey: Readers Pick Apple in 2004
Search results in RSS
MSN search is giving us, as an alpha release, the option to get an rss file of the web search, with the option to get the search results right in your RSS reader.
Here are the step-by-step instructions in how to use it:
- run your web or news search on the MSN Search or in MSN News Search
- add the text “&format=rss” to the url
- copy the full url into your RSS Reader.
Here are some samples for web search url:
http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=Firefox&format=rss
or for news search:
http://beta.search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?q=Romania&format=rss
.
Stealth Marketing
Stealth Marketing is based on the fact that word of mouth remains the most effective form of promotion. As such, the article Stealth Marketing: How to reach consumers surreptitously (PDF) is giving an insight look in this new marketing trend considered to be a viable alternative to conventional advertising because it is perceived as softer and more personal than traditional advertising.
Here are some tactics and examples mentioned in the paper:
- Viral Marketing: word of mouth via digital platform.
- Brand pushers: hired actors who approach people in real-life situations to slip them a commercial message.
- Celebrity marketing: paying celebrities or famous people money to covertly or overtly promote products.
- Bait-and-tease marketing: getting people interested in something which is revealed later to be something quite different.
- Marketing in video games: embedding brands and logos in electronic games, sometimes called “advergaming”.
- Marketing in pop and rap music: embedding commercial messages in popular music.
Romanian Telecom Market
Considering the fact that after EU integration in 2007 metropolitan aerial fiber optics networks will not be allowed anymore, the Parliament is working on a major project for setting up metropolitan underground networks. It will definetly be a hard blow for the actual providers (and especially for the cvasi-monopolistics cable network operators) that are doing more or less whatever they want with the market at the moment in most of the cities across the country.
Designed to be accessible to all local authorities, companies, and especially to telecoms (phone, ISPs, CATV), the new metropolitan infrastructure will basically open the market and allow final users to choose amog various communications services providers. For Bucharest only the investment is estimated to USD 2 bn.
(Source, romanian only: Cotidianul)
2005 Index of Economic Freedom
The 11th edition of the Index of Economic Freedom published by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal measures 161 countries against a list of 50 independent variables divided into 10 broad factors of economic freedom. These 50 variables are grouped into the following categories:
- Trade policy,
- Fiscal burden of government,
- Government intervention in the economy,
- Monetary policy,
- Capital flows and foreign investment,
- Banking and finance,
- Wages and prices,
- Property rights,
- Regulation
- Informal market activity.
Surprinsingly (or not) US for the first time no longer ranks among the top 10 free nations of the world. Surprisingly (or not) Romania is placed the 125th way behind countries as Rwanda or Lebanon.
The World in 2004
January
January 4: NASA’s Spirit Rover powers up its systems for a pioneering three-month operation to Mars. Later in the month, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory send their second Mars rover, Opportunity, to the red planet
January 29: The MyDoom worm wreaks more havoc after becoming the biggest Internet virus ever.
February
February 29: Faced with an armed rebellion and mounting international pressure, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide leaves the troubled Caribbean nation. The US deploys a contingent of Marines to Haiti as violence erupts in the wake of Mr Aristide’s departure.
Parmalat’s accounting and bankruptcy scandal rocks Italy’s financial industry.
March
March 11: More than 170 people are killed and around 600 injured in a series of blasts which rip through Madrid railway stations. The number of dead later climbs to more than 200. While initial blame for the blasts in Spain are attributed to the Basque separatist group ETA, it later emerges that an Al Qaeda-related group is responsible. Days later the Socialists win the national election, an outcome attributed to the party’s policy of bringing the troops home from Iraq
US space agency Nasa successfully launched an experimental hypersonic jet which travelled at 5,000mph – smashing the world speed record for an aircraft
April
NATO expands to include 7 former Warsaw pact nations.
April 29: Images of US soldiers allegedly abusing Iraqi prisoners at a notorious jail near Baghdad have sparked shock and anger.
May
May 1: EU newcomers welcomed to the club. The EU is now the world’s largest trading bloc. The 15 old members welcomed in Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia at midnight.
June
June 7: Tens of thousands of Allied veterans who survived the D-day campaign of World War II are honoured in poignant ceremonies 60 years after the battle.
After a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease, former US President Ronald Reagan died.
June 18: A European constitution has been agreed, creating a landmark new EU rulebook, after marathon talks in Brussels.
European Union leaders agreed to appoint Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso as EC president.
June 28: The US-led coalition has handed over sovereignty to the new Iraqi government, two days earlier than expected.
July
July 23: A national commission probing the September 11 attacks in the US finds “failures of imagination, policy, capabilities and management” by the United States government and recommends a sweeping overhaul of intelligence services.
A ceremony marked the beginning of construction of the new Freedom Tower at the World Trade Centre site
Claims about Iraq’s WMD that led to the war were wrong and based on false CIA analyses, said a US Senate report
August
August 5:Even 5 months past its release date, many enterprises are holding off on installing Windows XP Service Pack 2, but Microsoft is pushing its deployment by eliminating security fixes for older operating systems such as Windows 2000. SP3’s firewall, browser and system-service modification make the free SP2 a worthwhile upgrade, but it needs thorough testing to avoid application-compatibility issues.
August 13: The Olympic Games return to their birthplace of Athens. The Games of the 28th Olympiad are opened in a spectacular ceremony, which bring the myths of Ancient Greece to life through the magic of 21st century technology.
August 19: Google Inc. initial public offering. The shares innitialy offered at $85 topped $200 briefly this fall before settling to approximately $170.
September
September 1: Armed militants attack a school in the southern Russian province of North Ossetia near Chechnya and hold teachers, school children and parents hostage. The siege, in the town of Beslan, ends three days later with more than 300 people killed.
October
October 1: US light crude settled at $50.12 a barrel, up 48 cents, the first time it closed above $50 in its 21 years of trade on New York’s Mercantile Exchange
October 4: The rocket plane SpaceShipOne has shot to an altitude of more than 100km for the second time inside a week to claim the $10m Ansari X-Prize
October 28: Australian scientists announce the discovery of a new human species after remains of a small bodied hominid are found on the Indonesian island of Flores. The creature is quickly dubbed the ‘hobbit’ and heralded as one of the biggest finds since the discovery of the Neanderthal man more than a century ago.
November
November 2: The US election is held and Republican President George W Bush is re-elected to govern for a second term defeating Democrat candidate Senator John Kerry.
November 9: Somewhat unexpectedly, browsers became a hot issue in 2004 as security problems plagued MS’s Internet Explorer. Rather than keeping up to date on a constant stream of security patches, some IT managers switched to the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox browser.
November 11:Yasser Arafat, who triumphantly forced his people’s plight into the world spotlight but failed to achieve his lifelong quest for Palestinian statehood, has died aged 75.
November 22: Tens of thousands of protesters have rallied to contest the official victory for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, amid Western concern over the vote.