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You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Medianews digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Boston: Police decide to investigate Pops brawl (George Antunes) 2. Thousands of Nuclear Arms Workers See Cancer Claims Denied or Delayed (George Antunes) 3. Putting the Future Of TV Into Focus (George Antunes) 4. From Intel and A.M.D., Rival Boasts of Technology (George Antunes) 5. $45 Million Invested in Internet TV Venture Joost (George Antunes) 6. Out of Chaos, Order. Or So Google Says (George Antunes) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:20:38 -0500 From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Medianews] Boston: Police decide to investigate Pops brawl To: medianews@twiar.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Police decide to investigate Pops brawl By Suzanne Smalley Boston Globe Staff May 12, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/05/12/police_decide_to_investigate_pops_brawl?mode=PF Boston police said yesterday they have assigned a detective to investigate a brawl that erupted at Symphony Hall Wednesday night, a reversal of the department's earlier decision not to pursue charges. Police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said yesterday that the original decision to let the two men leave without facing charges was made by officers at the scene. By Thursday, however, police Captain William Evans decided to begin an investigation after reviewing the officers' report on the incident, Driscoll said. Driscoll said detectives plan to interview witnesses and summon both men to court, where a clerk magistrate will determine who bears responsibility for the fight. The spectacle of two men brawling in the refined environs of Symphony Hall, on opening night of the Boston Pops, has catapulted Boston and the Pops onto the international stage, garnering jokes in headlines around the world. According to a police report obtained by the Globe, one of the men involved in the fight, Matthew Ellinger, 27, a Brighton man, told police that the incident started when he told another concert goer, Bourne resident Michael Hallam, to be quiet during the performance. Ellinger told police that he repeat edly asked Hallam, 44, to stop talking and tapped him with his program in the minutes before Hallam punched him, according to the police report obtained by the Globe. Hallam, who owns a boat construction business and convenience store in Bourne, could not be located for comment yesterday. Hallam's lawyer, Augustus Wagner, said Ellinger struck Hallam before Hallam reacted. "There's always two sides to a story," Wagner said. "There's a whole other side which is prior to any video or anyone's attention being drawn to it that precipitated a very unfortunate incident." A neighbor at his home on the Cape Cod Canal in the affluent Gray Gables section of Bourne, said Hallam told him Ellinger cuffed him on the back of the head before announcing he had reported Hallam to an usher. The neighbor declined to be identified. The neighbor said Hallam does not plan to return home in the near future because he is avoiding the media. Last night an acquaintance arrived at Hallam's home, which he shares with his wife and children, to walk the family's bulldogs. Ellinger said yesterday that he went to Roxbury District Court to ask for charges to be brought against Hallam, but court officials told him police were already pursuing the matter. He said he spoke with a detective who told him to be available for further discussion tomorrow or Monday. Peter Fiedler, whose father, Arthur Fiedler, was a longtime Pops conductor, was in attendance when the fight broke out. He said he did not see the brawl because he was on the floor, and the fight happened in the balcony. Fiedler said that he thinks his father might have handled things differently from conductor Keith Lockhart, who stopped the orchestra midsong as shrieks came from the balcony. "He probably would have told him to shut up and kept playing," Fiedler said. "Sometimes you're almost better off ignoring things and keeping going. But that woman's scream was sort of blood curdling." ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:25:42 -0500 From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Medianews] Thousands of Nuclear Arms Workers See Cancer Claims Denied or Delayed To: medianews@twiar.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Thousands of Nuclear Arms Workers See Cancer Claims Denied or Delayed By Michael Alison Chandler and Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, May 12, 2007; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102277_pf.html Walter McKenzie's assignment toward the end of the Cold War was to mop up after mishaps at a nuclear weapons factory. With a crew of other laborers from rural Georgia, he swabbed away leaks and spills inside the secret buildings, until one day his body became so contaminated with radiation that alarms at the factory went off as he passed. "They couldn't scrub the radiation off my skin -- even after four showers," McKenzie, 52, recalled of his most terrifying day at the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant near Aiken, S.C. "They took my clothes, my watch and even my ring, and sent me home in rubber slippers and a jumpsuit." Later, when doctors discovered the first of 19 malignant tumors on his bladder, McKenzie followed the same torturous path as thousands of nuclear weapons workers with cancer: He filed a claim for federal compensation. It was denied. Unable to access secret government files, or even some of his own personnel records, McKenzie could not sufficiently prove that he was exposed to something that may have made him sick. Nor can most of the 104,000 other workers, retirees and family members who have sought help from a federal program intended to atone for decades of hazardous working conditions at scores of nuclear weapons facilities around the country. Since its inception in 2000, the compensation program has cut more than 20,000 checks and given long-delayed recognition to workers whose illnesses were hidden costs of the Cold War's military buildup. Yet, of the 72,000 cases processed, more than 60 percent have been denied. Thousands of other applicants have been waiting for years for an answer. Overall, only 21 percent of applicants have received checks. Even as the nation continues to close and dismantle many nuclear weapons sites, a growing number of those who helped build the bombs are turning to lawyers and legislators to argue they are being treated unfairly. Many complain that the compensation process is slow, frustrating, even insulting. "You get exposed to something that's so bad you have to leave your clothes behind," McKenzie said, "then they try to tell you it's not their fault that you got sick." Some evidence suggests the government has tried to limit payouts for budget reasons. Internal memos obtained by congressional investigators show the Bush administration chafing over the program's rising costs and fighting to block measures that would increase workers' chances of compensation. But Labor Department officials who oversee the program say it has been successful, pointing to the large sums distributed: about $2.6 billion in payments in five years, far more than some early estimates. Missing or unreliable records and the murkiness of cancer science, the officials say, make it difficult to satisfy all the claimants. "In a compensation program, you get benefits out to people who are eligible and you inevitably have to deal with the fact that some people are not eligible," said Shelby Hallmark, director of Labor's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs. "As for the assumption that the program is somehow trying to block people from getting compensation, nothing could be further from the truth." David Michaels, a former Energy Department official who helped launch the program in the late 1990s, said it is designed to "bend over backward" to award compensation to deserving workers. "Most of the people who should be compensated are being compensated," said Michaels, now associate chairman of George Washington University's department of environmental and occupational health. Still, Labor's management of the program has drawn bipartisan, and often fierce, criticism from members of Congress. Former congressman John N. Hostettler, an Indiana Republican who chaired a House subcommittee overseeing the program, said at a hearing last December that Labor Department memos reflect a "culture of disdain" toward workers and raise questions about whether the department exceeded its authority by using "legalistic interpretations" to limit eligible workers. "To the bean counters, I would remind you that these aren't normal beans you are counting," Hostettler said. "These funds are a small acknowledgment of the sacrifice by workers whose lives were put at risk to make this country safe." Clear Line on a Murky Issue The compensation plan was unveiled in September 1999 by then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "We're reversing the decades-old practice of opposing worker claims and moving forward to do the right thing," he said in 2000. The shift was prompted in part by a drumbeat of reports about hazards at nuclear weapons plants, including articles in The Washington Post that showed how the government for years fought lawsuits from workers in Paducah, Ky., who were exposed to plutonium 100,000 times as radioactive as they were trained to handle. Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, the government agreed to provide $150,000 and medical benefits to claimants who developed certain diseases and cancers. Another part of the program covers those exposed to toxic chemicals. For each claim, government investigators review the evidence and decide whether a worker's illness was more likely than not caused by exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals at work. Under the act, the claim is denied if the probability is ruled to be less than 50 percent. The complex task of coming up with such estimates through reconstructing the conditions inside secret plants as much as 60 years ago was assigned to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH. The estimates are based largely on personnel files and historical radiation measurements at the plants. But the records are often so incomplete and unreliable that it can be impossible to determine a worker's true exposure. For example, workers would sometimes remove the badges they were supposed to wear to monitor their cumulative doses of radiation. "At every site, you hear stories about workers being told to put their badges in their lockers," said Mark Griffon, a radiation-safety expert who advises the government on worker exposure. "If workers wore their badges and ended up exceeding their quarterly radiation limit, they could be laid off or put in a different job." Another obstacle is that records are becoming harder to track as plants are dismantled. Early this year, for example, more than 400 boxes of medical records that had been contaminated by radiation at an Ohio weapons facility turned up in a landfill in Los Alamos, N.M. The government is deciding whether to exhume them. Long Wait in Colorado The compensation program does provide a path for the government to help workers if records are lost or questionable. But critics say officials are reluctant to pursue it. NIOSH and a White House-appointed panel on radiation exposure can recommend groups of workers from a particular site for a "special exposure cohort," making them automatically eligible for compensation if they suffer from leukemia, thyroid cancer or one of 20 other cancers. So far, groups of workers from 18 sites have been added to the special exposure cohort, and petitions are pending for workers from a dozen other sites. The process can be difficult, as people who worked at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant who applied for that status have learned. On the rugged foothills outside Denver, there's little sign now of the sprawling plutonium facility that once employed as many as 7,000 people. The site was dismantled in a $7 billion, 10-year effort that ended in 2005 and is being turned into a wildlife refuge. With the plant gone, many workers are struggling to re-create what happened in the 800-building complex that manufactured plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs. Thousands of fires were recorded in the plants' 40-year history, including one on Mother's Day 1969 that burned for several hours and released massive amounts of radioactive material. Of the more than 5,100 Rocky Flats claims filed, about 1,400 have been approved. Many applicants who were denied blame missing or inadequate records and petitioned two years ago for special cohort status. NIOSH officials recommended against the special status for Rocky Flats, reasoning that they could account for missing records by altering their models and overestimating exposures. Then, earlier this month, the radiation advisory board recommended the special cohort for a small number of workers -- those employed from 1952 to 1958, when gaps in the recordkeeping apparently were the largest. Advocates for the Rocky Flats workers point to multiple cases to illustrate the difficulty of meeting the government's standard for compensation without being part of the special cohort. One worker, Donald Gabel, contracted a rare form of brain cancer at age 29, after nearly 10 years at the plant, and died in 1980. Months before his death, he testified that his job required him to climb several times a day to the top of a furnace, his head inches from a pipe expelling radioactive exhaust. Government contractors said they could not find his records and could not take new measurements because the pipe had been removed. After Gabel died, his wife requested tests of plutonium levels in his brain, but she says government scientists told her they had lost most of the tissue and could not take an accurate sample. Despite the problems, Gabel's widow, Kae Williams, won a rare victory in a traditional workers' compensation lawsuit, getting about $15,000 for her three children. But when she applied for additional benefits under the new program in 2001, the claim took four years to process and was ultimately denied. A government computer program found only a 41.73 percent chance that her husband's brain cancer was work-related. "They make it sound like they are doing the right thing," Williams said. "For a glimpse, you think they are. And they are not." Ill and Unaided At South Carolina's Savannah River plant, workers may face longer odds than most. They lack the organization and lobbying advantages found at some larger sites where workers tended to be white and represented by strong unions. "Black workers in these plants were put in high-exposure areas without proper protection or monitoring," said Robert W. Warren, a lawyer who represents dozens of Savannah River workers. "They worked in some of the most dangerous places, but there are no records today to show that." When it opened in 1951, the Savannah River nuclear complex was one of the first employers in South Carolina's rural midlands to offer African Americans a shot at relatively good wages and benefits. But not all jobs at the plant were created equal. The jobs offered to black workers in those days were often menial ones: cleaning spills, scraping paint, removing waste, sometimes in the most dangerous parts of the plant, said Wayne Knox, a radiation-safety expert who was a contractor at the Savannah River plant for nearly two decades. In the '50s and '60s, he said, workers often were kept in the dark about risks. "Not just blacks, but also [white] people from poorer neighborhoods were put in a position where they had a lot of unnecessary exposures," said Knox, who now advises some families filing claims. The sprawling, 300-square-mile site still contains one of the highest concentrations of radioactive waste of any weapons plant in the country, most of it in swimming-pool-size tanks. Special exposure cohort status has not been granted for the plant's workers; in a region that remains very poor, there are few advocates available to argue the workers' case in Washington. McKenzie, the Savannah River laborer, was angered when government officials calculated the probability that his work caused his bladder cancer at only 28 percent. He became even angrier when he learned that the plant had been unable to locate many of his files -- including records for the day he became so contaminated his clothes had to be destroyed. "There were whole months where the data is missing," he said. McKenzie has asked a Labor Department appeals panel to reconsider the decision, while he struggles to pay hefty medical expenses that include regular visits to the urologist to see whether his cancer has returned. Having mostly given up hope for a government check, he now works a second job, cleaning up spills and leaks in private homes a few miles from the weapons plant. "At first it looked like I had a good claim, but it didn't go anywhere," McKenzie said wearily. "A person doing it by himself has no wind." ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:30:02 -0500 From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Medianews] Putting the Future Of TV Into Focus To: medianews@twiar.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Putting the Future Of TV Into Focus Many Make Switch to High Definition By Sam Diaz Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 12, 2007; D01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102226_pf.html There's nothing flashy about "Sunrise Earth," a show that airs weekdays at 7 a.m. on Discovery HD Theater. As the name implies, the program simply captures a sunrise. No narration, no music, no host. What's special about it is that it's captured in vivid high definition. And for an increasing number of viewers, that's enough. In the past few months, consumers have found new reasons to upgrade their television-viewing experience. The number of channels broadcasting in HD are on the rise, spurred by the drastic drop in price of high-definition TV sets. Plasma screens priced near $4,000 three years ago now go for about $1,500. Today, 26 percent of U.S. households are watching sets that offer higher-resolution pictures, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. HD sets being shipped in the United States are expected to more than double by 2010. With more viewers comes increased pressure to make more channels available in high definition. The average cable subscriber receives fewer than a dozen channels that can broadcast in high definition, and then not every show on each channel is produced in the higher-quality format. But that's changing, as the rollout of more HD channels and shows becomes one of the top priorities for the studios, as well as cable and satellite providers. DirecTV, for example, has pledged to offer 100 HD channels by the end of the year. Like the introduction of color TV in the 1960s and cable TV in the late 1970s, the shift to the new format will transform mainstream television viewing. The improved quality comes with a higher price tag, however, not just for those buying the sets, but also for those making and transmitting the programs. "People want to justify their expense," said Phillip Swann, president and chief executive of Virginia-based TVPredictions.com. "They're sitting around saying, 'I've got to watch something in high-def because I just spent $2,000 on a high-def TV.' " The leader in high-definition channel offerings today is Dish Network, with more than 30. DirecTV and Dish Network plan to add channels later this year and early next year, including offerings from ESPN, ABC Family, the History Channel and the Disney Channel. For networks, especially those with numerous niche channels under their umbrellas, the payback is becoming more evident. Discovery Communications, for example, has noted that viewers are tuning in to the five-year-old Discovery HD Theater to watch shows like "Sunrise Earth" and "Deadliest Catch," a show about Alaskan crab fishermen that they otherwise might never have discovered, said Clint Stinchcomb, executive vice president for the HD network at Discovery. Ratings are carrying over to Discovery's other standard-definition channels after segments from those channels appear on Discovery HD Theater, he said, pointing to a boost at "Animal Planet" after one of its shows was broadcast on the theater channel. Viewers who experience television in high-definition tend to stick with it, he said. It's hard for them to go back to regular old programming. "What that enabled us to do . . . was to develop a deep emotional connection with the 11 [million] to 12 million who are able to access the service today," Stinchcomb said. But as the number of channels offering HD shows increases, so does the strain being put on the technology that delivers those shows to viewers. The number of channels that a cable or satellite provider can offer on its lineup is limited by the amount of programming transmitted to set-top boxes at any given moment. High-definition programming, because of the amount of data needed to create the higher quality, eats up six to seven times the capacity of standard programming. To increase capacities, DirecTV and Dish Network are launching more satellites. DirecTV said the first of two satellites is scheduled to be launched next month and the other later in the year, a timetable that is critical to ensuring that it can deliver on its 100-channel promise. DishNetwork's parent company, EchoStar, has said it plans to launch two satellites before the end of the year. "We will continue to supply as much HD as is possible," EchoStar spokeswoman Cory Vasquez said, noting that the company would have the capacity to offer as many as 200 HD channels nationally next year. The cable industry, meanwhile, is developing its own technology to help it deal with increased demands on its system. Comcast is set to begin testing a technology called Digital Switch Video that helps it preserve capacity. Instead of delivering all channels to all subscribers simultaneously, the technology would send the channel as the viewer tunes into it. Until that technology is widely available, Comcast is trying to sell consumers its On-Demand service, which allows users to pull up a listing of high-definition programs without taxing the network. Over time, consumers will be able to find high-definition content from a number of sources, not just cable, satellite, or high-definition signals broadcast by the over-the-air networks. As video programming over the Internet also expands, consumers will be able to see Web-based content on their HDTV screens. AppleTV, introduced this year, allows users to wirelessly transmit movies and television shows downloaded from iTunes. High-definition DVDs, while still limited in their selection, are made for the higher-resolution screen. -----------------[BOXED FEATURE]--------------------- HDTV in U.S. Households 26% in 2007 How Households Receive TV Signals 11% receive signals only over the air 18% have at least one TV that receives signals over the air 58% have at least one TV that receives signals via cable 26% have at least one TV that receives signals via satellite ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:32:16 -0500 From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Medianews] From Intel and A.M.D., Rival Boasts of Technology To: medianews@twiar.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed May 10, 2007 From Intel and A.M.D., Rival Boasts of Technology By LAURIE J. FLYNN NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/technology/10chip.html?pagewanted=print SAN FRANCISCO, May 9 ? The fierce rivalry between the chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices is ratcheting up as both companies claim superiority in technology used for notebook computers. On Wednesday, Intel introduced an upgrade to its popular Centrino chip set for notebook computers that it says is far more energy-efficient, uses a faster processor and features much improved graphics. The new chip set, which Intel called Santa Rosa while it was under development, also supports a new version of Wi-Fi that executives say can be five times as fast as the current version and can communicate over twice the distance. Last week, A.M.D. held its own news conference here to show new features of its Turion notebook processor and a branding campaign with the theme Better by Design. Among other things, the new A.M.D. notebook technology offers improved graphics ? which executives say stems from the company?s acquisition of the graphics developer ATI last year ? and longer battery life. This month, A.M.D. is expected to announce further improvements to its notebooks that will be introduced at the end of the year. Intel?s original Centrino chip set, introduced for notebook computers four years ago, helped popularize wireless communications. While the company has upgraded Centrino nearly every year since, it considers the latest version a vast leap in performance. ?Its breakthrough performance meets energy conservation,? said Mooly Eden, an Intel vice president and general manager for mobile products. With the new Centrino, Intel ?moves the mobile platform forward another notch,? said Nathan Brookwood, founder and principal analyst at Insight64, a research and consulting company in Saratoga, Calif. A.M.D. offered fewer details on its long-term strategy for the mobile market, Mr. Brookwood said. ?A.M.D. attempted to rain on Intel?s parade, but it remains to be seen if it was a storm or a drizzle.? A significant new feature of Centrino is the optional Turbo Memory, which uses flash memory chips to help notebooks load applications and boot up faster. Intel?s notebook offerings include two new brands, the Centrino Duo, for consumers, and the Centrino Pro, which has enhanced security and technology management tools and is aimed at business customers. Intel said notebook manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell, were building more than 230 new systems using the chip set. Both Intel and A.M.D. are hoping to stay ahead of the enormous demand for notebook computers, the hottest part of the computer business. Sales of notebook computers rose 26 percent last year, while desktop systems increased just 2 percent, according to the market research firm IDC. Notebook computers are expected to account for more than half of all computer systems by 2011. More than two years ago, A.M.D. was first to market dual-core chips, which use multiple processors for faster performance while keeping energy consumption down. As Intel stumbled to get its dual-core strategy on track, A.M.D. began to gain market share, particularly in the desktop and server markets. Largely because of the strength of the Centrino chip set, Intel has managed to keep a somewhat firmer grip on the notebook market. In recent quarters, Intel has begun to strike back at its competitor, introducing wave upon wave of dual-core processors. Its share of the overall market increased to 80 percent in the first quarter, from 74 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006. Over the same period, A.M.D.?s share fell to 19 percent, from 26 percent, partly as a result of an inventory glut, according to Mercury Research. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:34:31 -0500 From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Medianews] $45 Million Invested in Internet TV Venture Joost To: medianews@twiar.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed May 11, 2007 $45 Million Invested in Internet TV Venture By MATT RICHTEL NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/technology/11video.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print SAN FRANCISCO, May 10 ? Joost, a start-up that delivers television programming over the Internet, said Thursday that it had received $45 million in financing from venture capitalists and content partners including CBS and Viacom. The company, based in Luxembourg and started by the creators of the Internet telephone service Skype, plans to use the money to expand its advertising, programming and marketing operations, said David Clark, executive vice president for advertising at Joost. Joost was founded 18 months ago and has signed up 500,000 users in its test phase. Unlike YouTube and other video sites that mostly display user-submitted clips, Joost distributes shows in traditional television formats, like 30-minute or hourlong programs. Like broadcast and some cable television, the service is supported through advertising. But the commercials consume about three minutes of each hour of programming, versus 15 minutes on standard TV, Joost investors said. The investors said the new investments, in the company?s first institutional round of financing, indicate that the concept had enough momentum to make it worth the risk. The financing ?signifies this is ready for prime time,? said Danny Rimer, general partner in London with Index Ventures, a venture capital firm that led the financing round along with Sequoia Capital of Menlo Park, Calif. Mr. Rimer said he believed that Joost would benefit from the spread of high-speed Internet access and from the increasing ability of marketers to aim their advertisements at specific audiences over the Internet. But among the questions for Joost is whether consumers will want to watch longer-form programming on their personal computers, rather than their televisions. Mr. Clark of Joost said the company had 36 advertisers, including Nike, Coca-Cola and Intel, along with 100 content partners, including CBS, Viacom, Turner Broadcasting and Warner Brothers Television. Some of the content is new and older television programming, including ?C.S.I.,? and ?Laguna Beach? from MTV, while some is independent programming drawn from Internet-only producers. Viacom said in a statement that it had invested in Joost because the service was set up to protect copyrighted content and to profit from selling advertising around longer programs. Viacom has clashed with YouTube, owned by Google, over the Viacom-owned material that users have posted on the site. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:36:19 -0500 From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Medianews] Out of Chaos, Order. Or So Google Says To: medianews@twiar.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed May 11, 2007 Out of Chaos, Order. Or So Google Says. By MIGUEL HELFT NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/technology/11google.html?pagewanted=print MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 10 ? Over the years, Google has carefully cultivated the image of a zany company in which innovation and new products ? lots of new products ? emerge from a bit of chaos. Now Google is trying to put some order into that chaos ? or at least appear to do so. Speaking at the annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, said Google?s long array of initiatives was organized around three ideas. ?Our next strategy evolution is to really think about three components,? Mr. Schmidt said. ?Search, ads and apps,? he said, using a common shorthand for applications, or software programs. The move is less a strategy shift than a new message ? a way for Google to talk about its disparate initiatives in a way shareholders and the public can readily understand. ?It is worth saying that our underlying mission has not changed,? Mr. Schmidt noted. The first two ? search and ads ? are well known to shareholders, and they account for virtually all of the company?s success. The third ? apps ? puts under one umbrella Google?s growing business of offering an eclectic mix of software. Mr. Schmidt said the unifying theme behind the seemingly disparate programs was that they resided on the Web, rather than on users? PCs, and were available wherever there is an Internet connection. The programs include photo storage, social networking, online calendars, e-mail, instant messaging, word processing and spreadsheets. Most are free, and many compete with paid offerings from Microsoft. But Google has started charging businesses for some of them. ?That is a business that looks like it is going to grow very nicely for us,? Mr. Schmidt said. A shareholder proposal to force Google to resist censorship in countries with authoritarian regimes like China was defeated by an undisclosed tally. But Patrick W. Doherty, an investment official for the City of New York, which sponsored the resolution, was greeted with applause by many of the few hundred shareholders present when he made the case for it. He said afterward that it was ?a moral victory.? ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list Medianews@twiar.org http://twiar.org/mailman/listinfo/medianews_twiar.org End of Medianews Digest, Vol 261, Issue 1 *****************************************