New FTC tech blog
Ed Felton, the Chief Technologist at the FTC, has a new blog which he describes as "published by the Federal Trade Commission" but expressing the views "of the Chief Technologist" and not those of the Chairman or the Commission. The blog will focus on technology issues. It is hosted by wordpress.com not by a .gov site.
- Tech@FTC. As the nation’s consumer protection agency, the FTC works on technology issues every day. You’ll see lots of discussion of technology in our reports, cases, speeches and testimonies, not to mention the consumer and business education pieces we publish. But we haven’t had a venue for speaking, more directly and less formally, to the technically minded public about tech issues. That’s what this blog is for. Our goal is to talk about technology in a way that is sophisticated enough to be interesting to hard-core techies, but straightforward enough to be accessible to the broad public that knows something about technology but doesn’t qualify as expert.
- RSS feed.
Oil and Gas Information Sources
Here, from the Columbia Journalism Review, is a Reporter's Toolbox of primary sources of information related to gasoline prices and oil production in the US, which journalists can use to evaluate and clarify the political rhetoric.
- Reporter's Toolbox: Oil and Gas Prices, By Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review (March 22, 2012). Every year, news stories about US gasoline prices appear in the early spring and remain popular until the end of the summer driving season in September. But "pain at the pump" takes on special significance during presidential election years, as Republicans and Democrats use gas prices to attack one another's energy policies and curry favor with voters. This year, the GOP is blaming the Obama administration for rising prices, but in 2008, it was Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, who was pointing his finger at Washington. Make no mistake, all such accusations rest on shaky ground. The price of gasoline is determined primarily by the price of crude oil (in February it accounted for 72 percent of the cost of regular unleaded and 65 percent of the cost of diesel), which is established by a global market over which US energy policy holds little short-term sway. The 2012 campaign has already seen innumerable claims and counterclaims related to gas prices and domestic oil production. Journalists should be fact checking all those statements, letting their readers and viewers know whether they represent truth or spin. More often than not, however, they drop competing quotes into their stories without assessing their relative merits. This is lazy reporting that does a disservice to voters. We understand it can be hard to dig up the necessary background on deadline, especially while traveling.
ProQuest To Begin Publishing “Statistical Abstract of the United States” (Print & Electronic Versions)
via INFOdocket.com From ProQuest ProQuest will rescue one of researchers’ most valued reference tools when it takes on publication of the Statistical Abstract of the United States beginning with the 2013 edition. The move ensures continuation of this premier guide to an extraordinary array of statistics, which has been published since 1878. The U.S. Census Bureau, responsible for publishing the work, announced in March 2011 that it would cease production of the Statistical Abstract after the 2012 edition, prompting widespread concern among librarians, journalists, and researchers about the disappearance of this essential research tool. “I’m thrilled that ProQuest will continue aggregating this important content,” said Wright State University librarian Sue Polanka, author of the widely read No Shelf Required blog. Polanka was part of a Reference User Services Association committee who organized a discussion at the American Library Association’s Midwinter conference about how to save the Statistical Abstract from extinction. “Even in our increasingly digital world, the Statistical Abstract remains one of the best reference sources for libraries.” [Clip] The ProQuest Statistical Abstract will be available in both print and digital formats. The digital version will include monthly updates to tables, deep searching at the line-item level, powerful facets for narrowing search results, image and spreadsheet versions of all current and historical tables, along with links to provider sites. The digital Statistical Abstract will be available as a stand-alone service or as a fully integrated part of ProQuest Statistical Insight, a comprehensive collection of statistical publications, including a million plus tables, covering subjects in economics, business, market research and the social sciences. The print edition will continue much like its previous incarnations, with roughly the same number of tables as in past editions. The ProQuest statistical editorial team will also include detailed bibliographic documentation, an updated back-of-the-book index, and updated introductory sections. ProQuest will co-publish the book with Bernan Press, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc, which will print, market and distribute the book. Both are available for pre-sale beginning in April 2012. Note: We've also asked ProQuest for answers to a few questions about pricing, access, etc. We will we report back on INFOdocket when we here back. Continue reading
Liberating America’s secret, for-pay laws
Cory Doctorow says: "This morning, I found a an enormous, 30Lb box waiting for me at my post-office box. Affixed to it was a sticker warning me that by accepting this box into my possession, I was making myself liable for nearly $11 million in damages. The box was full of paper, and printed on the paper were US laws -- laws that no one is allowed to publish or distribute without permission. Carl Malamud, Boing Boing's favorite rogue archivist, is the guy who sent me this glorious box of weird. I was expecting it, because he asked me in advance if I minded being one of the 25 entities who'd receive this law-bomb on deposit. I was only too glad to accept -- on the condition that Carl write us a guest editorial explaining what this was all about. He was true to his word."
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Liberating America's secret, for-pay laws, By Carl Malamud, boingboing (Mar 19, 2012).
Boing Boing Official Guest Memorandum of Law To: The Standards People Cc: The Rest of Us People From: Carl Malamud, Public.Resource.Org In Re: Our Right to Replicate the Law Without a License
Crowdsourced Public Information about Broadcasters
The New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative has a fascinating project that asks members of the public for help in collecting FCC-required information from broadcasters and then posts that information on the Web. The Columbia Journalism Review describes the project this way:
In exchange for using the public airwaves for free, broadcast stations are required to serve their local community, a condition the FCC refers to as a station's "public-interest obligations." The standards for what counts towards satisfying these obligations used to be quite considerable, but currently, the chief requirement is that a station maintain a "public inspection file," and make it available to any member of the public that asks. In the file, stations are required to keep information including a political advertising log and a list of the community-serving programming the station has recently aired. Starting in 2010, in the context of the FCC's Future of Media Inquiry, the New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative began asking members of the public for help in collecting these public files and posting them on the Internet. Now, with the FCC’s recent proposal to require broadcasters to post the files online -- and with TV stations' adamant opposition to the proposal -- the New America Foundation has reenergized its crowdsourcing campaign.Read the CJR interview with NAF media policy fellow Tom Glaisyer about the project and check out the online files:
- Q & A: New America Foundation's Tom Glaisyer, By Alysia Santo, Columbia Journalism Review (March 20, 2012).
- Public Interest Obligations, New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative. (links to the collected files of records of the public interest obligations from stations around the country.)
- Public Interest Obligations: Can you help us collect data for our analysis?, by Tom Glaisyer, New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative blog (April 20, 2010).
- What Does It Mean to Have a Public Interest Obligation in a Digital Age?, by Tom Glaisyer and Kara Hadge, New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative blog (February 23, 2010).