The Globe and Mail - Mathew Ingram Columns

NO SHORTAGE OF WAYS FOR FANS TO CONNECT WITH CLEESE

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00 EDT

Just a couple of years ago, legendary British comedian John Cleese said he was retiring from writing and performing, telling interviewers that he didn't think he could ever eclipse some of his earlier television hits such as Monty Python or the Fawlty Towers series.

Are news reports credible? Web service gives readers power to decide

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00 EDT

Surveys often find that media consumers have a fairly low opinion of the credibility of the news media.A new Web service called NewsCred, which launched yesterday morning, wants to help change that by allowing readers of news sites and blogs to say whether they think a particular report or story is credible or not.

BONO ACCIDENTALLY LEAKS NEW SONGS

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00 EDT

It's hard enough for bands to keep their new songs from turning up on the Internet before their official release. Now they apparently have to worry about accidentally leaking new tracks themselves.

DOWNLOAD SOME HOT 78-RPM SINGLES

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00 EDT

At first, it seemed almost too good to be true: a website where one obsessed audio fan had encoded and uploaded thousands of rare and collectable 78-rpm recordings, and was providing them for free to anyone who wanted them. And after an initial report from Wired magazine, the website suddenly disappeared and was unreachable.

GOOGLE NOW TAKING IT TO THE STREET

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00 EDT

Candid photography has been a popular pastime ever since cameras were first invented. However, Google has turned that phenomenon into an industry with its ''Streetview'' service, in which the company's camera-equipped cars take 360-degree photos of streets in the U.S. and other countries so that users of Google Maps can see pictures of where they're going.

SALON OPENS ITS DOORS TO A NEW WEB MODEL

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00 EDT

Salon, an online magazine started by mainstream journalist David Talbot in the mid-1990s, was one of the first major online media outlets, along with Slate (started by Microsoft and now owned by The Washington Post). But apart from experimenting with a variety of advertising vehicles - including the current ''watch this ad and read the site for free'' model - the site hasn't done much to push the boundaries of the magazine-on-the-Web approach. That seems to have changed, however, with the launch of Open Salon, a public blogging network and social-media aggregator.

QUAKING AND TWITTERING

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00 EDT

In some ways, it's a marriage made in heaven: an earthquake and one of the latest geek social networks. When a magnitude-5.4 quake struck near Los Angeles on Tuesday morning, there were messages being posted to the Twitter network before the rumbling and swaying of buildings had even stopped. The message that seems to have been the first, from a computer-science student named Vixy, said simply: ''earthquake.'' Other messages were a little more elaborate (none was overly wordy, since Twitter restricts messages to just 140 characters).

BAND SENDS MESSAGE WITH FREE CD: KILL NEW COPYRIGHT BILL

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00 EDT

From the excellent Torontoist blog comes news that a Canadian band - the Craft Economy - has one-upped itheir previous CD experiment (in which they stapled free CDs to telephone poles last year) and has included with their new batch of discs a statement criticizing the proposed federal copyright bill, C-61.

THE PAUSCH EFFECT: VIRAL VIDEO WITH A DIFFERENCE

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00 EDT

There's no question that Randy Pausch - the Carnegie Mellon University professor whose inspirational ''last lecture'' video became a media sensation over the past six months or so, and who died on Thursday from pancreatic cancer - was a YouTube phenomenon. But, in a lot of ways, he was unlike virtually every other ''viral video'' hit that has taken off on the video-sharing site.