Murdoch's Newspaper (Losses)

With advertising moving over to other forms how long will it be before we see the demise of the number and variety of newspapers.

Are journalists being disintermediated?

Undoubtedly with our current downturn the value chains are changing.

clipped from www.thisislondon.co.uk newspapers have been suffering in the credit crunch as profits shrank at The Sun and the News of the World and losses grew at The Times and Sunday Times Times Newspapers, publisher of The Times and Sunday Times, reported that losses jumped 17% from £43.9 million to £51.3 million in the year to 29 June 2008 - before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and recession hit the advertising market. News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun and the News of the World, announced profits fell to £55.1 million for the same period, down from £61.8 million a year earlier. Turnover at Times Newspapers dropped marginally to £444.8 million from £447.1 million The overall loss of £51.3 million The Sun and News of the World posted an operating loss of £18.5 million. Advertising revenue fell, with the exception of digital ad sales, and it also blamed "higher technology development costs in relation to digital activities".

Google 'close' to buying Twitter

clipped from technology.timesonline.co.uk Google is rumoured to be close to buying Twitter, according to an influential technology blog. Google would have to pay well above the $250 million (£170 million) valuation of Twitter suggested by a recent round of venture capital funding. Google would benefit by developing its search offering, taking advantage of the real-time information provided by users of the micro-blogging site Twitter is attractive because it has built a service that attracts this much volume, creating a constantly growing, twitching, seething real-time source of comments, news and opinions. Twitter’s traffic in the US, excluding visitors using mobile phones, grew from 6.1 million unique users in January to nearly 9.8 million users in February.

Government Databases

The Daily Mail comment upon the Government database Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust report.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk In 2002, Tony Blair launched a database of medical records for everyone in the UK In this mad world of warped priorities, data collection takes precedence over patient care. Since 2002, the costs of Connecting for Health have doubled to an astonishing £12.7 billion, sucking even more cash from real medical services. Two of the four contractors working on the system have pulled out and its implementation has been put back four years to 2015. But even when it is operational, some GPs have said they will refuse to put patients' data onto it for security reasons. It won't, of course. Victoria Climbie and Baby P died not through lack of a computer system but because doctors and social workers who came across them failed to spot obvious signs of harm. Today's database-builders don't seem to understand that the more the authorities watch us, count us and photograph us, the less they actually see.

IT and the economic downturn

Taking this clip from the Economist of 15 January 2009 the report shows that for IT, the recession will have a fairly neutral impact. Could we even say that there are "green shoots"? We could say that the leading edge technologies that will emerge from this recession are led by a very different approach to IT delivery.

clipped from www.economist.com Microsoft and IBM would soon both get rid of about 16,000 employees each, 17% and 4% respectively of their workforces. If true, these would be some of the biggest cuts in the history of the information-technology (IT) industry. Is the industry heading for a worse downturn than the one that followed the internet crash in 2001? some forecasters still expect global IT spending to grow this year, at least when you allow for currency fluctuations. Forrester expects an increase of 3%. many reasons why spending is more robust IT market has become more global China and India is expected to continue to grow Today IT departments are much less prone to wasting money the industry’s big companies are better managed and have more cash on hand SaaS and other computing services supplied online, and collectively called “cloud computing”, have become better and more widespread commoditisation and standardisation are creating new platforms for innovation be ready for another of its high-growth phases

Sun Not a Global Warming Culprit, Study Says

We are all running out of excuses

clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com Cyclical changes in the sun's energy output are not responsible for Earth's recent global warming, a new study asserts. Instead the findings put the blame for climate change squarely on human-created carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases—reinforcing the beliefs of most climate scientists. "Up until 1985 you could argue that the sun was [trending] in a direction that could have contributed to Earth's rising temperatures," said study author A. Mike Lockwood of the University of Southampton in Britain. Two decades ago, "it did a U-turn. If the sun had been warming the Earth, that should have come to an end, and we should have seen temperatures start to go the other way," Lockwood said.

NHS Information System

clipped from uk.news.yahoo.com By Tim Castle Reuters - Tuesday, April 17 an influential committee of MPs said on Tuesday. The 12 billion pound National Programme for IT is already more than two years behind schedule, the Commons Public Accounts Committee noted in a report. the largest non-military computer project in history -- were "struggling to deliver". One of the largest, Accenture Ltd, withdrew in January after making a 240 million pound loss on the project. "The programme is not looking good," said committee chairman, Conservative MP Edward Leigh. To date more than 2 billion pounds has been spent, "Scepticism is rife among the NHS clinicians four years down the line, the costs and benefits for the local NHS are unclear." The project's aim is to improve treatment by making patient records, most of which are still on paper, available electronically throughout the country. The group of MPs levelled specific criticism at iSoft, the troubled IT firm responsible for supplying around 60 percent of the software.

6 important points on making a social network

in a blog Social Media Marketing for Small Business 6 important points are made

clipped from searchengineland.com 1a. Start a blog. a great way to open up a dialogue with your customers 1b. Comment on other blogs. Blogging is about creating and joining conversations 2. Get active at Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers is a great way to share your knowledge with people who are looking for it 3. Make and share videos. "Tour" videos—tours of your business 4. Take and share photos 5. Try StumbleUpon discovery-type of social sites (Digg, Reddit, Netscape, etc. 6. Join groups & mailing lists. finding your customers where they are. Every social marketing opportunity will have its own rules to follow, and you should make sure you know those rules Don't spam the system a few high-quality photo submissions that add to the community Add to the signal, not the noise.

Requirements are not “done”

In Blog

Requirements are never done: How To Be A Good Product Manager: Product management tips

"Requirements are not “done” until they are clearly understood, implemented, functioning properly, tested, and validated. Until that point, an important product management responsibility is to ensure that the vision and strategy are being carried out in the proper implementation of the requirements"

Umm, indomitable statment reflecting the thinking from the IT perspective, but, dig a little deeper and the rationalism reflects a totalitarian approach

User Experience in Agile

Levent Gurses’ Journal » User Experience in Agile: "User Experience (UE) is probably one of the least understood fields in today's software creation community"

umm Stats are odd things - the "Countries were judged on the integration of technology in business" something that is very difficult to measure. however - the interesting point of this - is the countries on the list and not on the list - where are the countries like Korea?

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk NETWORKED READINESS INDEX RANKINGS 2006 (2005) 1: Denmark (3) 2: Sweden (8) 3: Singapore (2) 4: Finland (5) 5: Switzerland (9) 6: Netherlands (12) 7: US (1) 8: Iceland (4) 9: UK (10) 10: Norway (13) Source: WEF

US 'no longer technology king'

Singapore was among the nations ranked higher than the US The US has lost its position as the world's primary engine of technology innovation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.