Who pays for content and services on the internet? My friend Bo Peabody thinks we should be asking not just whether ad-supported journalism is feasible, but whether ad-supported social networks will work. In a Washington Post op-ed titled “Twitter.org?“, Bo leverages his experience founding and running Tripod.com to suggest that... [view entry]

My colleague Hal Roberts has been hard at work on a fascinating research question: where in the world are the websites we pay attention to? It’s an important question for his work on surveillance – if most of the popular sites for Chinese audiences are hosted in mainland China (they... [view entry]

Dan Gillmor offered an observation a few days back about the challenges of being both fast and being correct in the world of journalism, suggesting a need for “slow news“. I got an email earlier today that reminded me that it’s not just news reporting where speed can trip you... [view entry]

The Malagasy dwarf Hippo: " When Humans Don't Seem to Count" Dallaire on Rwanda and Darfur Notes on Romeo Dallaire's lecture on Rwanda, Darfur, genocide and intervention at Princeton, from Lova Rakatomalala (tags: dallaire rwanda darfur africa genocide conflict peacekeeping UN) How Skype Can Quickly and Easily Become a Social... [view entry]

There are many things I admire about my friend and colleague, David Weinberger: his intellectual curiosity, his generosity with his time and guidance, his sense of humor… One facet of David I most admire is his willingness to think in public. Most people who speak for a living (as David... [view entry]

Friend and colleague Dan Gillmor came up with a powerful idea at a Berkman retreat this past week – the need for a “slow news movement” in journalism, a focus on reporting that’s about careful, reasoned analysis, not about speed. (Dan credits the term to me – that’s too kind... [view entry]

This post covers presentations at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media at MIT’s communications forum. Josh Levinger leads off the final session at CFCM’s show and tell, titled “Crossing Borders”. His project, Virtual Gaza, aggregates the stories of civilians who were present in Gaza as bombs fell earlier this year... [view entry]

This post covers presentations at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media at MIT’s communications forum. Rick Borovoy’s project Lost in Boston focuses on what might well be my pet peeve with Boston – lack of signage. (Seriously. It’s a big problem. I suspect we do it to avoid letting Yankees... [view entry]

This post covers presentations at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media at MIT’s communications forum. Cristina Xu leads off a segment focused on the future of news. She introduces her project, the News Positioning System, by digging into American history to talk about “transient newspapers”. When the US postal system... [view entry]

This post covers presentations at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media at MIT’s communications forum. Ryan Toole is designing a platform called Red Ink, a tool designed to enable secure, collective financial action. He points out that there are existing tools – wesabe, mint.com, yodlee – which unify your online... [view entry]