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NBC stupidly shutting down Breaking News app, service

NBC stupidly shutting down Breaking News app, service The decision, as it often does in the media business, came down to revenue. "Unfortunately, despite its consumer appeal, Breaking News has not been able to generate enough revenue to sustain itself," Ascheim said in the letter supplied by NBC …

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwideBarton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani, reporting at The Washington Post: The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal …

Judge calls Google book-scanning fair use

Judge calls Google book-scanning fair useGreat news for fair use doctrine, and a big win for word geeks. Judge Denny Chin said much in his ruling granting Google’s motion for summary judgment, but this part stuck out to me: Google Books permits humanities scholars to analyze massive amounts of data …

A new kind of freelance journalism

A new kind of freelance journalismThis is essentially journalism à la carte: Peter Jukes offered to continue live-tweeting the News of the World phone-hacking trial if the crowd would fund it. Interest was strong enough to do just that, and his Indiegogo funders ordered up some trial coverage, …

NSA responds to “erroneous” data collection reports (full text)

The National Security Agency, in a mass email to press Oct. 31, presumably responding to a recent Washington Post report on the agency’s direct data monitoring of company’s like Google and Yahoo, goes all third-person self-referential on us: What NSA does is collect the communications of targets of …

FBI asks DOJ to investigate source of Calderon leak to Al Jazeera

FBI asks DOJ to investigate source of Calderon leak to Al JazeeraIt could be that I’m new to the journalism industry and only recently interested in its developments. But it seems to me as if journalism and law are converging like never before, and on an international stage. While Al Jazeera America …

States cite lack of federal progress in pursuit of privacy reform

States cite lack of federal progress in pursuit of privacy reformSpecial interest groups oppose federal privacy reform to prevent onerous new regulations. But this effort must, at some point, become counterproductive. A multitude of state-specific privacy frameworks that, by (federal) law, can’t …

Liberals, Tea Partiers unite to protest NSA in DC

Liberals, Tea Partiers unite to protest NSA in DC The march attracted protesters from both ends of the political spectrum as liberal privacy advocates walked alongside members of the conservative Tea Party movement in opposition to what they say is unlawful government spying on Americans. What a …

Reuters nixes Next: Failed redesigns and the challenge of expanding a digital audience

Reuters nixes Next: Failed redesigns and the challenge of expanding a digital audienceThat’s a shame. This image alone illustrates the design strides made by the Next team (the cancelled redesign is on the right). The Reuters iOS app is better than that of Associated Press, for what it’s worth.

Subscribe to The Brief if you like concise daily updates on the tech news that matters

Subscribe to The Brief if you like concise daily updates on the tech news that mattersThe ads weren’t working, so The Brief is now accepting $3/month or $30/year memberships. The incredibly useful site by Richard Dunlop-Walters will remain free to all, but it’s continued existence is now predicated …