January 2007

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NEWS FROM CONGRESS
Who's Who on House Commerce Committee?
Rep. Boucher To Resurrect Digital Copyright Measure

TELECOM/INTERNET
Mixed Message in Memphis
Regulatory Trends: New Enabling Environment
Judge Throws Out Online Phone Suit Against Skype Founders

BROADCASTING
The State of the TV Station Business

JOURNALISM
Multiple Bids for Trib Remain in Play
News Corp enters bid battle for Tribune
Geffen turns page in a media dream story
Local Papers Mull Their Global Role
Media outlets battle it out over free-speech rights
The media's obsession -- make it stop!
What News Was Last Week

CHILDREN & MEDIA
Congress, FCC to Examine TV Ads and Kids Obesity
Rated R for Ridiculous
TV shows find young, affluent viewers on 'net
What Adults Should Know About Kids' Online Networking

QUICKLY -- Technology Is Taking Over Americans' Lives

NEWS FROM CONGRESS

WHO'S WHO ON HOUSE COMMERCE COMMITTEE?
[SOURCE: Technology Daily 1/22, AUTHOR: David Hatch]
John Dingell, the new chairman of the House Commerce Committee, is a
recognizable face in Washington and on the panel. A congressman since
1955, he ran Commerce from 1981 until the Democrats lost control of
the House in 1995. For years, Rep Dingell was viewed as closely
aligned with the Bell telephone companies, but as they consolidated
and moved beyond their core local phone businesses, his opinions also
evolved. Last year, during the protracted battle over
Republican-backed telecommunications legislation, Rep Dingell came
out swinging against AT&T, BellSouth (now part of AT&T) and Verizon
Communications, which sought to eliminate local franchise
restrictions and prevent regulation of their growing high-speed
Internet businesses. "This bill threatens real harm to consumers, to
our communities and to citizens of the Internet," Rep Dingell said
during committee action on the measure. "Many people will be worse
off after this bill than they are today. I urge a no vote." Yet in
2001, Rep Dingell teamed with then-committee Chairman W.J. (Billy)
Tauzin (R-LA) on a bill to let the Bells offer nationwide Internet
access. The FCC later granted much of the relief they sought. A
longtime telecom powerbroker, Rep Dingell also was central to passage
of the watershed 1996 Telecommunications Act. Following the mid-term
election, he outlined an ambitious agenda for 2007. Among the
priorities: fresh telecom legislation with a more deregulatory focus;
further examination of television "indecency," a perennial concern;
and renewed efforts to overhaul the multibillion-dollar universal
service fund that subsidizes telecom services in rural and impoverished areas.
http://www.njtelecomupdate.com/lenya/telco/live/tb-HKRC1169579775351.html

REP BOUCHER TO RESURRECT DIGITAL COPYRIGHT MEASURE
[SOURCE: Technology Daily 1/20, AUTHOR: Andrew Noyes]
Legislation that would repeal a ban against circumventing anti-piracy
technologies on digital content will be introduced before the end of
February, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) said. The bill, which failed in
the 109th Congress and in previous sessions, has been championed by
the Consumer Electronics Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Public Knowledge and other advocates for "fair use" of copyrighted
material. Movie studios and music labels have lobbied against the
measure. Rep Boucher said that he is "considering some modifications"
to the bill and has not arrived at a final draft. Despite minor
changes, the measure would still "empower the purchasers of digital
media to make fair use of the media that they lawfully acquire," he
said. The measure would uphold the landmark Betamax ruling of the
Supreme Court from more than two decades ago, Rep Boucher said. The
court found that devices with substantial non-infringing uses shall
not be the basis for holding manufacturers legally accountable if
others use the technology to infringe copyrights.
http://www.njtelecomupdate.com/lenya/telco/live/tb-CIER1169579593145.html

TELECOM/INTERNET

MIXED MESSAGE IN MEMPHIS
[SOURCE: Wired in Washington, AUTHOR: Drew Clark]
SavetheInternet.com is David to the Bell companies' Goliath. Over the
last two years AT&T, Verizon and their trade group, the United
States Telecom Association, spent more than $50 million lobbying
Congress to change the nation's telecommunications laws. Those
payments were made in vain. The Bell-favored bill, which had
overwhelmingly passed the House, died last year in the Senate. "Save
the Internet," by contrast, spent $250,000 on educating the public on
its side of the story. "Save the Internet" opposed the Bell bill, and
made Network Neutrality its rallying cry. It gathered more than 1.5
million signatures in support of this notion: that Bell companies
must be stopped from controlling the content that flows over their
broadband networks. At the National Conference for Media Reform
earlier this month, all the panelists were neutralistas. Not all
agreed on what their struggle meant. For Matt Stoller, a political
blogger at MyDD.com, the victory was a win for the political left.
"The Net Neutrality fight is the first pro-regulatory stance in
public debate that has been put forward in 30 years or so that won,
and it won in a very specific way," said Stoller. "We had a debate in
the public domain about whether the government should regulate the
Internet. We convinced the American people that the government should
regulate something." But Adam Green, communications director for
MoveOn Civic Action, preferred this philosophy: "We need to show and
prove the world that we are on the side of the free and open market,
and the free and open exchange of ideas." A bit later, Green derided
the telecommunications industry critics of neutrality for "trying to
brand us as being against companies." It's best to keep both sides
off-balance, said Tim Wu, the Columbia University law professor who
first penned the term "Net Neutrality." Some dislike his turn of
phrase, but he couldn't be happier: "For better or worse, that term
Net Neutrality has become a third rail" of telecom politics. Touch it
at your peril."
http://www.wiredinwashington.com/20070123.htm

REGULATORY TRENDS: NEW ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
[SOURCE: International Telecommunication Union, AUTHOR: Andy
Banerjee, Analysis Group; Gary Madden and Joachim Tan, Curtin
University of Technology]
The future of voice communication will be the future of all forms of
electronic communication; and the market will most likely be served
by a combination of broadband technologies, prominent among them
end-to-end fibre (wireline) and 3G (wireless) technologies (and their
successors). In this context, the central question is: how must
regulatory policy change to facilitate such a future? Specific
regulatory or policy reforms in future communications markets marked
by convergence and intermodal competition must be guided by the
dynamic efficiency principle. First, when the last mile access
bottleneck disappears, regulatory focus should shift from the terms
on which service and content providers can gain access to end users
towards ensuring interconnection among IP networks, and between IP
networks and access networks. Second, any blanket network neutrality
rule should be resisted. While undue discrimination may still need to
be monitored and rooted out, traditional common carrier regulations
accompanied by a blanket network neutrality rule can actually prove
to be counter-productive. Third, regulatory authorities must redesign
licensing regimes to adapt to new market realities created by
convergence and intermodal competition. Such licensing regimes should
not favour the emergence of a particular technology or service but
rather allow the market to make those decisions. Finally, regulation
for the future voice environment must mean prudent applications of
discretionary policies. Those policies may include: providing
incentives to develop and deploy small-scale, modular, and scalable
broadband technologies; providing opportunities and systems for
aggregating demand for broadband services; constraining international
mobile roaming charges to encourage roaming and international voice
communication demand; rejecting mandatory MVNO access to the networks
of incumbent mobile operators unless specific market failure warrants
such access; encouraging pricing models that recognize the
multi-sided nature of emerging broadband markets; and renewing global
efforts to control spam.
http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/newslog/Regulatory+Trends+New+Enabling+Enviro...

JUDGE THROWS OUT ONLINE PHONE SUIT AGAINST SKYPE FOUNDERS
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Alex Veiga]
A federal judge has thrown out an antitrust lawsuit filed by the
distributor of Morpheus file-sharing software against Internet phone
service provider Skype Technologies SA, eBay Inc. and other
defendants. StreamCast Networks Inc. had sought more than $4.1
billion in unspecified damages and a court order blocking eBay from
selling Skype services. StreamCast claimed the founders of Skype
broke an agreement to give StreamCast the right of first refusal for
the technology behind Skype's Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, service.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ONLINE_PHONE_LAWSUIT?SITE=KXLAM&S...

BROADCASTING

THE STATE OF THE TV STATION BUSINESS
[SOURCE: tvnewsday, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell hajessell( at )tvnewsday.com]
Lets face it: TV broadcasting has seen better times, but it's still a
healthy business with great prospects. Here's the bad and the good
and a few ideas for making it better. First the bad: The business
hasn't been able to stop the erosion of non-political national spot
revenue -- still a third of total revenue. Political advertising
keeps growing -- it topped $2 billion in 2006 and is expected to
reach new highs in 2008. But that growth masks the weakness in many
of the other major ad categories and the quickening loss of network
compensation. Broadcasters have yet to discover the key to DTV
riches. They made the capital investment, but after 10 years of
on-and-off experimentation, none has come up with a sure-fire way to
recoup the expense. Local HD is another big expense with no obvious
payoff, retrans cash is still elusive, the FCC is disinclined to
award multicast must-carry rights and the newly empowered Democrats
in Congress may crack down on TV violence and move to restrict
advertising of pharmaceuticals, fast food and political candidates.
The good: Cash-flow margins for most are still extraordinarily high,
and broadcasters have been able to maintain healthy margins by using
technology to cut payroll and other costs. Another trick is to run
two stations out of one shop -- duopolies and virtual duopolies. TV
stations have the programming that everybody wants to watch -- local
news, The Guiding Light, Oprah and primetime. You might be able to
see Ugly Betty on cable or Lost on an iPod, but you'll see them first
on the local affiliate.
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2007/01/23/daily.3/
See also --
* Limited Upside Seen For Big Media
[SOURCE: Forbes.com, AUTHOR: Joshua Lipton]
Market analysts see less upside ahead for media conglomerates. "While
reports of the death of traditional ad media have repeatedly proved
premature, they continue to slowly lose share and nothing seems
likely to change the trend. History dictates that ad dollars follow
eyeballs with a lag, and eyeballs continue to migrate away from
traditional media." Riding to the rescue of these companies could be
cash-heavy private equity firms.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/2007/01/22/big-media-earnings-markets-equi...

JOURNALISM

BROAD-BURKLE BID FOR TRIBUNE LIKELY TO REMAIN IN PLAY
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Thomas S. Mulligan
thomas.mulligan( at )latimes.com]
The bid submitted for Tribune Co. by billionaires Eli Broad and Ron
Burkle expires this afternoon, but people familiar with the auction
say they expect the Chicago-based media company to withhold a
response for now while encouraging the pair to stay involved. A major
Tribune investor said last week that he found the Broad-Burkle bid to
be attractive because it would involve an immediate $27-per-share
cash dividend plus an infusion of $500 million in capital from the
two entrepreneurs. Tribune, corporate parent of the Los Angeles
Times, KTLA Channel 5, the Chicago Cubs baseball team and other
newspapers and TV stations, also received bids last week from its
biggest shareholder group, California's Chandler family, and from the
New York-based private-equity firm Carlyle Group. The $4.7-billion
Carlyle bid is only for Tribune's broadcast division and the Cubs
[which many consider the jewel in Tribune's tainted crown]. Although
the Chandlers did not spell out their plans in their letter, they are
expected to later sell the newspapers, which include The Times, the
Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday and eight other papers. Rupert
Murdoch's News Corp. has thrown in with the Chandlers, agreeing to
take a minority stake in their deal, according to a News Corp.
insider who spoke on condition of anonymity because he had not been
authorized to discuss the situation. Under the deal, News Corp. --
owner of the Fox TV network, cable's Fox News channel and the 20th
Century Fox studio -- would get an operating agreement allowing it to
cut costs by combining certain noneditorial operations of Newsday
with those of its own New York Post.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-tribune24jan24,1,1823...
(requires registration)

NEWS CORP ENTERS BID BATTLE FOR TRIBUNE
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Matthew Garrahan and Aline van Duyn]
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has joined the Chandler family in its bid
for Tribune Company, with an eye to taking a stake in New York's
Newsday newspaper. Newsday, which is based in Long Island, is one of
Tribune's largest newspapers. Murdoch wants to combine back office
and operational functions at Newsday with those of the New York Post,
the News Corp tabloid that has made big circulation gains in recent
years but continues to rack up losses. Murdoch would likely take a
minority stake in a consortium owning the Tribune's newspapers,
rather than attempting to buy outright control of Newsday. Given News
Corp's television and newspapers interests in the New York market,
the company would be constrained by media ownership rules. Any deal
for Newsday would also hinge on the success of the Chandler
consortium's bid for Tribune, although Murdoch's interests identify
him as a potential partner if future bidders emerge for parts of the
Tribune group.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7a8febee-ab0b-11db-b5db-0000779e2340.html
(requires subscription)
* News Corp. participates in Tribune bid
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&s...

GEFFEN TURNS PAGE IN A MEDIA DREAM STORY
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Matthew Garrahan]
David Geffen's new interest in the newspaper industry comes as a
surprise, given the margin pressures the sector is facing amid the
rising tide of competition from the Internet. Geffen, the founder of
Geffen Records and a co-founder of DreamWorks SKG, the movie studio
he started with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, wants to buy
the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper is currently owned by Tribune
Company, which also owns other papers, such as the Chicago Tribune,
and is itself on the auction block. Rob Burkle and Eli Broad, two
Southern California-based billionaires, have bid for Tribune, as has
Carlyle, the private equity group, while the Chandler family, one of
Tribune's largest shareholders, has offered to buy the company and
sell off the newspaper assets. With Tribune's fate uncertain, Mr
Geffen, worth an estimated $4.5bn according to Forbes magazine, is
biding his time. One thing is clear though: having had a $2bn cash
offer for the LA Times rejected by Tribune, he could yet play a key
role in the newspaper's future.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/60e6e55c-ab0c-11db-b5db-0000779e2340.html
(requires subscription)

LOCAL PAPERS MULL THEIR GLOBAL ROLE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sarah Ellison sarah.ellison( at )wsj.com]
The Boston Globe said it would close all three of its remaining
overseas bureaus, reflecting a painful issue for larger metropolitan
papers: In the presence of steep budget cuts, do they get out of
international and national coverage and focus relentlessly on their
local markets? Advertisers think they should, and so do some of the
people interested in buying those papers. They see a world with wire
services like the Associated Press and a tier of national papers like
The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post
providing national and foreign news. "I'm not sure local papers need
to cover Iraq, need to cover global events," Jack Welch, the former
General Electric Co. chairman who wants to buy the Globe from New
York Times Co., told CNBC last week. "They can be real local papers
... and purchase from people very willing to sell to you their wire
services that will give you the coverage." Reducing international
staff at big metropolitan papers has become a contentious debate at
many newspapers as publishers struggle to redefine themselves.
Overseas coverage can confer prestige and prizes, and attract
talented reporters and editors, but now foreign bureaus are
increasingly being considered a luxury. "Many other regional
newspapers, some larger than ours, have taken similar steps in recent
years," Globe Editor Martin Baron said in a memo to his staff. "All
along, a guiding principle was to secure the resources required for
local coverage and for journalism that has the most direct impact on
our readers." The number of foreign correspondents at U.S. newspapers
had dropped to 249 in 2006, down nearly 12% from 282 in 2000. The
number of overseas reporters from all but the five largest papers
fell to 52 in 2006 from 80 in 2000.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116960535347085821.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
(requires subscription)

MEDIA OUTLETS BATTLE IT OUT OVER FREE-SPEECH RIGHTS
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Martin Kasindorf]
In a dispute between the "new media" of the Internet and the "old
media" of broadcasting, liberal bloggers and conservative talk-radio
hosts are accusing each other of trampling the First Amendment's
guarantees of free speech. Hundreds of blogs are exhorting national
advertisers not to buy commercial time on Disney-owned KSFO-AM in San
Francisco because some on-air hosts have made comments that the
bloggers allege are racist or encourage violence. KSFO personalities
say the bloggers are trying to muzzle their political views. The
bloggers say they're rallying behind the free-speech rights of a
colleague whose website was briefly shut down after Disney's ABC
network threatened to sue over alleged copyright violations. Some
advertisers, including Bank of America and MasterCard, have deserted
KSFO since an anonymous media critic identifying himself online as
Spocko began posting recordings of the station's "Hot Talk" hosts.
Spocko and some of his readers have been e-mailing the audio to KSFO
advertisers since 2005, asking the companies whether they want to be
associated with the controversial rhetoric. The First Amendment flap
was debated Sunday on CNN's Reliable Sources. Dan Riehl, a blogger
critical of Spocko, said some of the radio hosts' comments "were
blown out of proportion or misrepresented" in the complaints to
sponsors. Mike Stark, another blogger and a Spocko ally, said: "The
way to fight free speech that you disagree with is to engage in more
free speech. And that's exactly what Spocko did."
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070124/a_blogger24.art.htm

THE MEDIA'S OBSESSION -- MAKE IT STOP!
[SOURCE: Media Matters for America, AUTHOR: Eric Boehlert]
[Commentary] The press truly has embraced the notion of the nonstop
campaign and Boehlert thinks it has done so for increasingly selfish
reasons. For political scribes, presidential campaigns can be
career-making seasons, when high-profile promotions, book deals, TV
punditry contracts, and teaching positions can be pocketed. For news
media companies, presidential campaigns mean big business; relatively
inexpensive content that can be endlessly rehashed. In other words,
they're good for the bottom line. The never-ending analysis for 2008,
though, has already morphed into a deafening background noise. And
the press' often shallow performance last week does not bode well for
the long term. We have an industry of media political pros who have
surprisingly little to say, yet insist on saying (or writing) it over
and over and over.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200701220010
* Rivals CNN and Fox News Spar Over Obama Report
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/us/politics/24obama.html

WHAT NEWS WAS LAST WEEK
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: Mark Jurkowitz]
The tale of two kidnapped teenagers, nature's assault on California's
citrus crop, and another dose of "Obama-mania" competed with the Iraq
crisis for the media's attention last week. In the week of January
14-19, when President Bush hit the interview circuit to sell the
"surge" plan and the UN reported more than 34,000 Iraqi civilian
deaths in the year past, the war was again the leading topic in the
news. When combined, the policy debate (the top story at 14%) and
violence in Iraq (the fourth-biggest story at 6%) filled one-fifth of
the total newshole. That, however, represented a 50% drop-off from
the previous week when Iraq news virtually obscured every other
event. (The drop-off would have been even greater were it not for
television.) Several breaking and unfolding stories helped fill that
void. They were led by the rescued Missouri boys (second on the main
Index at 8%), a saga the press explored both for the ostensibly happy
ending and the unanswered and sordid questions. Vicious storms that
wreaked havoc with California's economy and killed scores in the
heartland were the third-most heavily covered story (at 6%). And
political rock star Barack Obama's establishment of an exploratory
committee was enough to make the 2008 Presidential race the fifth
biggest story at 5%. (The weekend announcements by Sam Brownback,
Bill Richardson, and most notably, Hillary Clinton, should keep that
category sizzling this week.)
http://www.journalism.org/node/3759

CHILDREN & MEDIA

CONGRESS, FCC TO EXAMINE TV ADS AND KIDS OBESITY
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Ira Teinowitz]
The controversy over whether TV ads cause obesity in kids is mounting
again as Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Federal Communications
Commission Chairman Kevin Martin unveil plans for a Valentine's Day
forum to look at voluntary steps that might lessen the risk. Sen
Brownback, a presidential candidate, described the forum as a
public-private effort and said major marketers, media companies,
health groups, consumer groups and advertising associations would
participate. He said General Mills, McDonald's, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods
and Coca-Cola would all be represented. From the media side, the
following companies are expected to participate: Walt Disney, Viacom,
Discovery Channel, Telemundo and the Black Family Channel. In a
statement, Sen Brownback said he was pushing the event as "a
bipartisan effort to provide a forum for the public and private
sectors to jointly examine the impact of media on childhood obesity
and to explore voluntary recommendations that will address the
alarming rise in childhood obesity rates." He also said that Federal
Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras and FCC commissioner
Michael J. Copps will participate along with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)
who has been highly critical of children's advertising. The Benton
Foundation will also participate.
http://adage.com/article.php?article_id=114496
* Congress, FCC to Examine TV Ads and Kids Obesity
http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11438
* Brownback, FCC Announce Media Task Force Participants
http://brownback.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=267849
* FCC News Release: http://www.fcc.gov/obesity/documents/nr012307.pdf
* Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate Enthusiastic About Childhood
Obesity Task Force
http://www.fcc.gov/obesity/documents/stdtt012307.pdf
* Visit http://www.fcc.gov/obesity for the latest information on the
task force.

RATED R FOR RIDICULOUS
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Kirby Dick, "This Film is not yet Rated"]
[Commentary] The Motion Picture Assn. of America and the National
Assn. of Theatre Owners last week heralded a "reform" of their film
ratings system, which assigns the ratings G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17
to most films released in this country. Unfortunately, the MPAA's
changes are almost entirely cosmetic and only go a small way toward
fixing a broken system -- a system so closed to public scrutiny that
no news organization had been able to disclose its workings until
they were revealed in the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated."
Despite protestations to the contrary, it appears that the film
shamed the MPAA into paying lip service to its critique. As the film
revealed, the association has been violating its own rule that raters
must have school-age children, and it has refused to allow filmmakers
to refer to other films when they appealed a rating. Both absurdities
will be fixed. But these are minimal changes. All of the fundamental
problems of the ratings system remain: its secrecy and lack of
accountability, its bias against independent and gay filmmakers and
its excessive concern with sexuality while rating violence much less
restrictively. An effective and unbiased film ratings system is of
great importance to parents, educators, film audiences and
filmmakers. If the MPAA is going to continue to oversee the ratings
system, it must make some real changes: reveal the names of all
members of the ratings and appeals board, disavow homophobic
discrimination and place more restrictive guidelines on violence
rather than sex. The sooner it makes these changes, the better.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-kirby24jan24,1,5...
(requires registration)

TV SHOWS FIND YOUNG, AFFLUENT VIEWERS ON 'NET
[SOURCE: Reuters]
U.S. television networks draw a younger, wealthier and better
educated audience when they run their shows over the Internet,
according to a new study released on Wednesday. The study by Nielsen
Analytics and Scarborough Research comes as networks have
increasingly made hit TV shows available for viewing through
computers. Concerns that allowing consumers to view those popular
programs and others over the Internet would cut into the number of
people watching them on television are unfounded, the study found.
"Video on PCs and iPods actually is expanding the audience for
broadcast and cable programs," the study said, citing data that total
TV usage was at an all-time high in U.S. households at 8 hours, 14
minutes a day during the 2005-2006 TV season. [Nielsen stressed,
however, that watching TV on your computer does not make you younger,
smarter or more affluent.]
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID...

WHAT ADULTS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT KIDS' ONLINE NETWORKING
[SOURCE: AlterNet, AUTHOR: Kate Sheppard, WireTap]
[Commentary] Social researcher danah boyd (who generally chooses not
to capitalize her name) has made a name for herself as an expert on
young people and online social networks. A Ph.D. candidate at the
School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley and a
graduate fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg
Center, boyd has also worked as a social media researcher at Yahoo,
Google, and Tribe.net. Recently, she appeared on The O'Reilly Factor,
where she enlightened Bill about Myspace and the "dopey kids" it
attracts. At 29, boyd has become the go-to woman for "adults" trying
to figure out what "kids" do online all day, and one look at her
blog, Apophenia, offers insight into her exhausting
speaking/interview schedule. This Q&A looks at about social networks,
kids these days, and the intersection of technology and political organizing.
http://www.alternet.org/stories/46766/
* Grief, comfort meet on MySpace
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-mygrief24jan24,1,66...
* MySpace to send U.S. users missing children alerts
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&story...

QUICKLY

TECHNOLOGY IS TAKING OVER AMERICANS' LIVES
[SOURCE: InformationWeek, AUTHOR: W. David Gardner]
If there was any doubt that computers and technology are taking over
the lives of Americans, it was dispelled Monday by two studies -- one
noting that most Americans spend more time with their computers than
with their spouses, the other revealing many drivers are e-mailing
and instant messaging while driving. After reviewing PC and broadband
Internet usage by 1,001 Americans, Kelton Research found that 65% of
U.S. consumers are spending more time with their computers than with
their significant others ["Yes, dear, I'll be up to bed in a minute;
I just want to finish downloading Battlestar Gallatica."]; moreover,
they aren't very happy with their technology experience. It's no
surprise that Kelton Research found that consumers are frustrated. "A
majority of Americans (52%) describe their most recent experience
with a computer as one of anger, sadness, or alienation," according
to the announcement of the study. The study, conducted for
SupportSoft, found also that the average American computer user is
wasting 12 hours a month because of problems with computers.
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=196902629
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