Google Kills A Bunch Of Products That Made It No Money (Silicon Alley Insider): Many people, including some journalists use Google Notebook for social bookmarking. Looks like it’s time to find another solution. “As it lays off 100 recruiters and fires 70 engineers (which it plans to replace) Google also said it plans to kill or hobble Google Catalog Search, bookmarking service Google Notebook, mobile social network Dodgeball, microblogging service Jaiku and Google Mashup Editor. Google Video will no longer accept uploads.”
Stopping development on Google Notebook (Official Google Notebook Blog): “If you haven’t used Notebook in the past, we invite you to explore the other Google products that offer Notebook-like functionality. Here are a few examples, all of which are being actively improved and should meet your needs: SearchWiki, Google Docs, Tasks in Gmail, and Google Bookmarks.
New FOIA Provisions Take Effect (LLRX.com): “As the year from its passage has elapsed, all sections of the FOIA amendments of 2007 are official FOIA law. Two of the sections did not go into effect until this year. This article discusses these two sections (6 and 7) of the OPEN Government Act of 2007 and the problems that will be encountered by requesters in trying to use these sections to their advantage.”
High Court Asks New Admin’s Opinion In Broad-Reaching Case (MediaPost): “The U.S. Supreme Court has asked President-elect Barack Obama’s administration to weigh in on a copyright case that could affect a broad swath of online media and technology companies. The case stems from a dispute between the entertainment industry and Cablevision, which intends to offer a remote DVR. Lawyers say the court’s decision in the case could have an impact on companies that offer any type of cloud storage, ranging from companies that offer digital music lockers to Web-based mixtape sites to Google, which allows users to store text-based papers in Google Docs. ‘It’s a really important case because it goes to the core of how digital bits flow,’ says Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. ‘It has implications for every Internet company in very profound ways.'”
The Place of Blogs in Journalism Education (Mediashift): Alf Hermida writes, “Blogs have become part of the editorial furniture of most news sites. In the U.S., 95 percent of the top 100 newspapers feature reporter blogs. So it seems appropriate to include blogging in the curriculum of journalism schools. For the past couple of years, my students at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism have written blogs as part of their course work. For several weeks starting in January, my graduate students will be required to maintain a blog with twice-per-week entries. The aim of this assignment is to introduce students to the notion of blogging as a form of journalism. Just because this is a blog, it doesn’t mean the students can write about anything.”
Google, SpotMixer Launch Self-Service Video Ads (MediaPost): “Google and One True Media — the parent company of online video ad creator SpotMixer — [yesterday publicly launched] a self-serve video ad creation service for Google AdWords customers to produce and distribute cable television ads via Google TV Ads. Developed jointly as a simple and free service by Google and SpotMixer, the ad creation widget allows customers to create high-quality video ads for distribution through GoogleTV. Businesses that previously could not access national TV ads are now able to place their ads on TV with lower risk.”
