Thursday, September 22, 2005

The Pegu Club. The Pegu Club's cocktail list is like a liquid welcome mat, an exhortation to unwind. By FRANK BRUNI. [NYT > Dining and Wine] 8:52:33 PM    comment []

The Looters' Class. Here’s a proposal sure to tickle the heart of the Looters’ Class: "How We’ll Get Back to the Moon,” NASA Bulletin, September 20, 2005 [ZNet Blog] 8:49:47 PM    comment []

Those Google search results. This Timesonline article says "there are suggestions that the power of Google News is distorting journalists' news judgment. Joel Achenbach, a Washington Post journalist, recently called Google "the tail that wags the blog," arguing that some online writers now work "as though their primary goal is to rise in the Google search results". On the online diary he writes for the Post, Mr Achenbach said: "The more you mention people like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the more readers you will have ... and the more you will rise in Google's estimation." This estimation is important because, as a window to potentially massive audiences, Google can make a huge difference to a site’s commercial fortunes. It has more than 6 million users a month and can, in the words of one national newspaper’s web analyst, "transform an ordinary traffic day into a very good traffic day" by picking up just one story and channelling readers towards it". However,"Google recognises the influence it holds in the daily battle for readers and advertising revenues. It portrays itself as "an honest broker" that merely mirrors the news agenda as it appears on the web and says it is a servant of both its users and the multi-billion dollar global news industry". Google: the tale that's wagging the blog? [Smart Mobs] 8:49:43 PM    comment []

Two from BNA News: NSA AWARDED NET LOCATION-TRACKING PATENT The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a method of figuring out an Internet user's geographic location. The patent describes a way to discover someone's physical location by comparing it to a "map" of Internet addresses with known locations. EC PROPOSES NEW DATA RETENTION PLAN The European Commission, seeking to break a four-year deadlock over anti-terrorist legislation that would require telephone network operators and Internet service providers to keep detailed data on their customers, proposed a compromise Wednesday that tries to overcome lingering privacy and cost concerns. The EC argues that the proposal addresses both data retention and data protection. 12:51:28 PM    comment []