Scrapbook clips catch up

My piece on 'Why Obama could be good for gays' has been republished by PinkNews, unfortunately the formatting fell through their template ;[

Arianna Huffington has been all over the UK media this week as she made a flying visit to London. I have been reading HuffPost since it started and am still waiting for it to do international news. It now has a green section and a 'living' section and, in London, much focus was on her move into local news.

The big, huge gap in American news reporting is international. It is very clear from reading HuffPost that even the liberals are plain ignorant. And why? Lack of decent reporting. It is pretty damming of Arianna's enterprise that she is putting local US news before developing a truly international section to her, now, very influential website — I just wish someone would say this to her and that didn't appear to happen on her flying visit.

One recent instance where HuffPost behaved badly was during the Burmese cyclone. They just reported and didn't link to donation sites — whereas the old school aka the New York Times did, and immediately.

Via Netimperative: Mobile advertising is the most unpopular ad format in the UK, according to new research from Dynamic Logic.

The study indicated that print advertising generates the most positive reaction with UK consumers and is seen as having the most relevance.

The Dynamic Logic ‘AdReaction’ study gauged consumer’s opinions of advertising.



Jonathan Zittrain interview on BBC News 24's Click.

His new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, develops the theme about how the commercial world's platform dominance will spike the sorts of developments which we need to drive the Internet further. I have always been queasy about the odd attitudes towards corps like Apple and their closed, exclusive partnership relationships. Zittrain nails why and I have to read the book.

I think that Tim Berners-Lee would agree. In a speech last week he said:

"How can we make the Web be an infrastructure that allows more than one person to think more effectively than one person can? There's no proof yet that for creative thinking we've done that," he said. "The challenge is to build a system that allows the formation of half-formed ideas and allows collective creativity."

HT: nomensa

Age Concern is developing an online campaign to encourage people to become more organised.

Cancer Research UK has launched a blog to tackle cancer myths.

Barack Obama is mentioning Google a lot on the trail to contrast himself with McCain (who cannot use a computer at all).

The authoritative Pew Internet Project has released a report on the election campaign thus far and found:

• 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.
• 35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos.
• 10% say they have used social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to gather information or become involved. This is particularly popular with younger voters: Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns.
  
• 6% of Americans have made political contributions online.
• 39% of online Americans have used the internet to access "unfiltered" campaign materials, which includes video of candidate debates, speeches and announcements, as well as position papers and speech transcripts.
  
• 5% of Americans have posted their own original commentary or analysis.
  

That's a lot.

One of the least reported aspect of the disaster that is Zimbabwe is the ecological crisis. This organization is trying to do something about it.

Shake hands with killers... Harare Tribune article on the history behind today's suffering.

At Zimbabwe's Independence then Prime Minister R. G. Mugabe established a government of apparent reconciliation including Zapu leader, Nkomo. The apparent integration of former warring combatants, Zanu's ZANLA and Zapu's ZPRA, into one Zimbabwe National Army proceeded. But, behind what eventually was revealed as a continuing charade, the ruthless accumulation of all power by Zanu (PF) proceeded apace.

BBC News Online Magazine, 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate.

"The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."

Would Australia's PM ban Botticelli? Germaine has a good 'ole go at Australia's Catholic PM.

Rudd would not recoil in horror from Botticelli's Birth of Venus, one hopes, but that, too, is the image of an adolescent. For some months, travellers on the London underground have been unable to escape the image of a naked pre-teen, fully lit and meticulously detailed down to her faint cloud of pubic fuzz. But no child protection campaigners have picketed the Royal Academy.

The Village Voice's annual Queer issues had lots of good stuff, including Triumph of the Lipstick Lesbians.

Today's middle-class and wealthy lesbians, however, look mainstream. "I've certainly noticed a more glamorous element among lesbians," said Julie Bolcer, the news editor of Go magazine, a monthly based in New York that is this group's bible. Bolcer can be seen many nights prowling hot-girl clubs for news tips. She's surprised by how many women wear long hair and how "flagrantly feminine" many of her peers dress.

21st Century ad from Heinz:



Quote of the week 1, from Radio 4's The Learning Curve:

"Up to 20% of school pupils could be classed as disabled under the Disability Discrimination Act".

Quote of the week 2, from Tim Footman's The gay priests row is a holy smokescreen:

"Let's be clear: removing all the gay priests from the Anglican communion would provoke a serious staffing shortage; although they're better off than the Roman Catholic church, which would probably cease to exist if all the Hail Marys had to find alternative employment."