House Says Bloggers Don’t Count As Journalists
Two versions of a bill in Congress would enshrine a journalist’s right to keep his or her sources confidential, effectively banning the government from forcing journalists to reveal whistleblowers. One version though—the House version—gives an incredibly stupid definition of journalist that excludes not only bloggers, but freelancers, independents, and nonprofit journalists as well.
For the most part, the Senate and House agree on what a journalist’s duties are and what journalism entails:
Street View For The UK, Netherlands Announced
Here’s a nice bit of news for anyone either planning a vacation or, due to the economy, canceling all trips farther than 15 miles from your home: Street View spread again this morning. Imagery’s now available for 25 cities in the UK and the Netherlands, and the service’s coverage of France, Italy, and Spain has been expanded, too.
Sony Reader Gains Access To Google Books
Sony has reached a deal with Google to offer access to more than a half-million public domain books from Google available on its current models of its Reader.
The books will be available for free to users of the Reader via Sony’s eBook Store, which now boasts more than 600,000 titles. The move is seen as a direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle eBook reader, which has access to over 245,000 titles along with newspapers, magazines and blogs.
Think Before You Tweet, This Juror Didn’t
Well you know you’ve hit the big time when your service is used by some crafty lawyer to file an appeal. Ok, so maybe it’s not hitting the big time but it is certainly evidence that not everyone on Twitter is a rocket scientist. Shocking I know but hey welcome to the new world order.
FAQ Pages Could Increase Your Google Rankings
Increase your website’s Google rankings with an effective FAQ page. Learn how FAQs enhance SEO and best practices to implement.
Real Life Examples: Local Social Media Marketing in Action
I’m not going to wax philosophical about social media marketing. I’m not going to tell you that you should be using social media or that you shouldn’t. I’m just going to show you some examples of how local businesses in the hometown of Murdok – Lexington, Kentucky – are utilizing it. It is up to you to find parallels between what these businesses are doing and strategies that you could be implementing within your own marketing efforts.
Making Customers Aware of Your Presence
Google Launching Friend Connect API
At PubCon Matt Cutts just announced the launch of the Google Friend Connect API. It let’s you copy javascript and make your blog more social.
Editor’s note: How do you think the launch of the Google Friend Connect API will affect data portability? Share your thoughts. Murdok anchor Abby Jonnson spoke with Cutts at the conference:
Is MySpace Toast?
If it’s lucky, MySpace is the new Yahoo. If unlucky, and it is unlucky lately, MySpace is AOL. Facebook has supplanted it, and will continue to do so, in much the same way Google ran past Yahoo, and for many of the same reasons.
Google Won’t Remove Pages About You
If you’ve been involved with the web for any significant amount of time, there is a good chance there may be pages up somewhere that you’re not thrilled about, but are out of your power to remove. Whether it is a page you made in high school or somebody else talking smack about you, you’re concerned about your online reputation (as you should be) and would like to see the page removed from Google’s index altogether.
Ex-Googlers Reveal Startup and Google’s Big Weakness
Having the title Ex-Googler is probably a good thing if you’re in the startup business. Twitter, after all, is run by ex-Googlers. That credibility worked the old hype machine for Cuil, too, until it couldn’t perform. Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan, ex-Googlers, suggest it’s a bad idea to take on Google where Google is strong—like Cuil did with search—but taking it to Google where it is weak can work.
And so they’ve fairly quietly launched Likaholix in private beta.