Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

• The bright side of America. Stardust lands: "We feel like parents awaiting the return of a child who left us young and innocent, who now returns holding answers to the most profound questions of our solar system." Launched in 1999 the Nasa capsule took five years to reach to the comet Wild II which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The space dust picked up by flying within 150 miles of the comet could hold the secret to the demise of Dinosaurs on earth if iridium is found.
• The dark side of America. 10,000 people protested at the murder of at least 18 people on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border by an unmanned CIA drone. An Iraqi International MA student of mine at City University comments: "They know better than anyone in the world how to make enemies." How about you? Just think about missiles on your home and community. "There is nothing left. Pieces of the missile are scattered all around. The impact of the explosions has been huge. Everything has been blackened in a 100-meter radius."
• Want some bulletproof Armani?
• The rigorous review of academic publishing is under further threat. Norwegian cancer scientist Jon Sudboe is exposed as a fake by falsifying every patient in his study of orla cancer. 250 of Dr Subdoe's sample of 908 people had the same birthday.
• In Brazil 4,000 slaves were freed last year by the government from 183 farms who mine unemployed workers in impoverished rural communities: "The first impoverishment is that of the soul. Often a worker will have the false sense that he is in the wrong if he flees."
• Prehistoric remains found in northern Spain indicate that neanderthal man mastered some primitive techniques for crossing the sea into Europe from Africa. Small islands may have existed in Strait of Gibaltar making the journey much less than the eight miles of today.
• Over 3,000 child soldiers in Burundi have been demobalized but have little to do and are seeking reintegration with guerilla armies.
• While the 24-hour news giants fight for a relatively small number of viewers they are overlooking the biggest threat to their existence: on-demand broadband multimedia."Rolling news is no longer the future. In 2004 the average broadband household spent 16 hours a week online. As anyone who uses any half-decent news platform on the web understands, the internet is faster, delivers instant depth and unrivalled interactivity. Rolling news - and here I mean the concept of a separate channel and its traditional front-end studio format - is the genre of television least suited to survive the transition to the digital age." (annoying registration requirement at mediguardian.co.uk makes it impossible to link to this story)
• "Thierry Henry was in his element, helping himself to a hat-trick of opportunities Middlesborough laid on for him and reveling in the chance to prove his stated commitment to Arsenal on the pitch."

• Sometime in 2006 more than half the world's population will be living in a town or city. Contrast this with 1800 when only 3% of the population was urbanised.
• By 2026 China's economy will be bigger than America's and India's will be much larger than that of any individual European country. Russia, Brazil and Indonesia will be not be much further behind.
• The global housing boom is the biggest financial bubble in history. A further jump in oil prices could pop this bubble by undermining consumer confidence.
• The concept of "Granularity" will be the trendy focus of management and consultants worldwide as grand global strategies will be desperately out of fashion and business focuses on efficiencies and exploiting local markets.
• The top three business travel destinations in the world are Canadian - Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Canadian cities fare best because "they have the right mix of feelgood factors without being too expensive. The large expanse of the Canadian wilderness and its cultural diversity make cities cosmopolitan havens".
• Be prepared for turbulent currency markets as the dangers of a collapsing dollar, a fractured euro or a soaring yuan are feasible risk scenarios.

1. Probably the coolest "how-to" on the WWW right now is this guide to hacking Google Maps for your own devious purposes. This is for advanced Internet users with a variety of web skills. Here's a couple of examples where people in Boston and Chicago have used the maps to chart public transport routes and this is an example of how maps can be integrated with real estate.
   
2. Promote your blog. Get it out there and let everyone enjoy your joys and misery. Be part of the collective. This post from the amazing Robin Good is a great place to start your promotional campaign. Learn about the benefits of RSS syndication. This is for anyone with a blog.
   
3. One of the different things about open source development is the way technologies develop. Technorati is part of a growing movement of sites tracking blogs and implementing a tag structure that announces the start of a progress to a semantic web for next-generation Internet. Pump up your blog by embedding technorati tags using this tutorial. Also for anyone with a blog and listed with Technorati you might be interested in adding the beta Technorati searchlet to your site. You can see it in action in the right column of this website.

Those young enough to remember the early 1990s will look back fondly at the "how-to" environment that stimulated the early growth of the World Wide Web (WWW). For programmers the tools necessary to learn about HTML, Java, SMIL were provided on websites that were probably the Google PageRank 9 sites of their day.

Well the WWW has grown up a lot since that time. There are now over 10 million blogs and tracking on Technorati and creating and supporting the tools to 'write' content is the explosive growth sector of the Internet. The Open Source movement is further driving a shift to creativity and collaboration in design and content. The dominant media is shifting with it.

Labels: internet, media