Hearst readies electronic reader -- a shining backlight in troubled times?

Fortune reported today that Hearst Corp. -- best known in my world as the company threatening to shutter the San Francisco Chronicle -- is expected to launch an e-book reader this year customized for periodicals. (Thanks to Digital Media Wire for drawing my attention to the story.) It provided few details about the device, and had no clues as to the manufacturer. CNet subsequently confirmed the report. But before we all get misty-eyed about another nail in the coffin of newspapers (note to younger readers: They're collections of non-interactive stories printed on paper, with no immediate opportunity to post comments), I think it's worth wondering for a moment about the challenge Hearst faces to develop a user interface as compelling as a broadsheet's.

One of the great things about the newspaper format is that it surrounds articles about things you know you're interested in -- say, the latest Yahoo shake-up -- with things that you didn't know to look for. I'm reminded of this every time I pick up a physical copy of the New York Times. Ordinarily I read the NYT online, scanning the business and tech stories that the paper's daily e-mail provides links to. But when I look at the printed version, I invariably see lots of other stories that intrigue me for reasons I couldn't have anticipated. I call that the serendipity effect of the big page, and I've yet to see an e-book reader capable of duplicating it. Even the Plastic Logic reader (pictured), which is almost as big as a magazine cover, can't do it. The screens simply aren't large enough.

I'm confident that some clever engineers will figure out how to deliver the same benefit on a pocket-sized screen eventually. Readers, chime in if you've already seen software that can do it. But it strikes me as a really difficult problem because it's hard to predict what might lead a consumer of tech stories to be drawn one day to a snappily written piece about a bicycle manufacturer -- other than the fact that it's snappily written, and what algorithm can detect that quality?

Photo: Preview of the Plastic Logic reader, due in trials later this year. Credit: Plastic Logic website

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

Amazon lets publishers disable Kindle 2's read-aloud feature

Is this little device's ability to read books aloud strangling the authors of America? Credit: jblyberg via Flickr.

Amazon.com reversed course today on the text-to-speech function of its Kindle 2 e-book reader. The e-commerce giant said publishers and authors can decide on a title-by-title basis if they want to disable the feature that reads books aloud in a robotic voice.

But, in the equivalent of sticking its tongue out at a little kid just before giving him back his candy, Amazon began its press release by saying critics who argue that the text-to-speech function violates copyright law are plain wrong:

"Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given," the company said. "Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat."

The Kindle 2, which shipped this week, is a faster and smaller version of the popular digital book reader. Digital sales are growing fast but still generate less than 1% of the $25-billion U.S. book publishing market.

The text-to-speech function appeared to catch the industry off guard. The Authors Guild objected, saying that publishers don't have the contractual rights to ...

Anti-stimulus tea parties light up Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and social media

Protesters rally against the stimulus plan in Hartford, Conn. Credit: Bob Child / Associated Press

In the latest example of how user-produced media can capture so-called "massively-shared" events in a way mainstream media can't, a wave of images, blog posts and videos from a nationwide protest has been washing across the Web. The protests, dubbed "tea parties" by participants, were held Friday in several U.S. cities including Portland and Washington, D.C. as a response to what demonstrators see as unfettered spending and encroaching government as represented by President Obama's economic recovery plans.

The tea parties were catalyzed by the widely seen screed by CNBC personality Rick Santelli, in which he jokingly suggested he'd organize a Chicago tea party to protest what he saw as the president's plan to "subsidize the losers' mortgages." 

The idea is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, the famous revolutionary-era event in which American colonists dumped British tea into the Boston Harbor to protest oppressive taxation policies by the British government. 

Though even a year ago it would've been a slow and difficult process to chronicle a widely scattered protest such as this, the online community is now mastering the art of high-speed media sharing, a trend that can unite geographically disparate communities via the Web. Much of the sharing is now facilitated by the fast-growing messaging site Twitter, where today the keyword "teaparty" was one of the most frequently used terms. Users sent out a flurry of updates about attendance, links to photos on Flickr and Photobucket, and videos on YouTube and other sites. 

The protests appeared to be rather small and did not attract much coverage in the mainstream media. But interested observers had a remote window into the activities taking place in cities such as Tulsa, Okla., Austin, Texas, Nashville, Chicago, Lansing, Mich., Houston, Hartford, Conn., and Los Angeles, where a group gathered this morning on the Santa Monica pier. (This blog reports that, as a part of that action, former "Saturday Night Live" actor Victoria Jackson read the definition of "socialism").

If social media is a good barometer, it looks like the spending bill is stimulating the citizenry already.

-- David Sarno

Parents think Facebook is groovy, kids not so enthused

Parents are joining Facebook at a rapid pace. Or, as their kids might say, at an alarming rate.

A website called Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook is leading the youthful cries, documenting and poking fun at the phenomenon. Kids who are plagued by the Internet invasion of parents, aunts and uncles can submit screen shots of unusual parental interactions that are then posted to the blog.

Helping Mom with Facebook. Credit: Dan Harrelson via Flickr.

The gems include mommies and daddies who get a bit too publicly affectionate, all kinds of Facebook groups for divorcees and unintended sexual innuendos. (Ew, I don't want to hear about your romantic getaway, Mom.)

When Time tech columnist Lev Grossman published "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies" a few weeks ago, many readers on the Web reacted with a smile and a gallon of skepticism. Yeah, right, they seemed to say. The hip website, which just a year and a half ago reported that less than 5% of its users were 35 or older, is for geezers? Good one, Grossman.

Wait, what's this? A survey released by Facebook in January says that 19% of its users are older than 34. What happened in that time? After all, Facebook doesn't seem any less cool.

As parents became privy to this social service that has been helping their kids connect to one another for years, they may have come to the realization that the same tools could help them keep in touch with their own friends.

Stanford hosts a series of classes to educate parents on Facebook. The approach seems to treat the social networking website more as a tool to monitor and keep in touch with children than as a service to reinforce all relationships. Nonetheless, it's further proof that parents are thinking about the website.

When Facebook launched, barely more than five years ago, it was an exclusive service, available only to Harvard students. It soon expanded to universities across the nation. The first thing my classmates and I did four years ago, after deciding which college we would be attending, was create a Facebook account. For a generation of students, it was our own exclusive hangout.

But now, it's open to the public and practically everybody's hangout. And we're all just going to have to live with seeing photos of our aunts shooting pool at a bar in our news feeds.

-- Mark Milian

Jango, matching artists and ads

As record labels and artists cast about for revenue streams to offset the slump in CD sales, many have looked to the advertising industry to license songs for commercials (big dollars!), sponsor downloads (potentially big dollars!) or just buy ads on free music sites (dollars that may be measurable if rounded up to the nearest integer!). Unless the product being sold is music-related, though, an ad on an online jukebox or radio site doesn't seem as effective as one tied to search keywords. That's because people who do a search online signal their interests overtly. If I search for "light truck durability," for example, I'm revealing a purchase intent. If I steer my browser to an online radio station, I'm not revealing much besides the type of music I like to hear.

Daniel Kaufman, chief executive of Jango, is trying to draw a clearer link between musical tastes and purchase intentions. Jango operates an online radio site, and it provides its radio feeds and related content to more than 1,000 music sites (including those that specialize in individual bands, lyrics or guitar tabs). To differentiate the advertising network it launched across those sites, the company is developing a database of associations between products and artists. The point is to tell advertisers which artists' fans respond to coffee ads and which ones have a weakness for designer duds.

How? "It's simpler than you'd think," Kaufman explained in a recent interview....

Around the Web 2.27.09: Digg toolbar, Dell drops, Stringer heads Sony

-- Digg is beta-testing a new tool bar that does more than just Digg -- it shortens URLs (like TinyURL) and generates random pages (like StumbleUpon). TechCrunch

-- More Pirate Bay trial antics: A music executive incited laughter when he claimed that people would have bought every piece of music that they got for free by file sharing. Threat Level

Sony President and CEO Howard Stringer. Credit: Robert Scoble via Flickr

-- Dell's fourth-quarter income fell 48%, proving that even a "robust" low-priced-hardware business model struggles in this kind of downturn. LAT

-- Time Warner Cable blamed Internet slowdowns in SoCal on DDoS attack. Ars Technica

-- Chief Executive Howard Stringer will also become president of Sony, saying he'll mold a leaner, more integrated company. LAT

-- Cablevision said it plans to charge for Newsday online access, and scathing criticism has already ensued. ValleyWag

-- AOL completely reorganized its ad network, Platform-A. BoomTown

South Korean wireless companies may disconnect subway riders from their beloved mobile TV

Subway riders in Seoul love watching TV on their cellphones but may lose the privilege as wireless companies consider cutting back. Credit: Ju-min Park / Los Angeles Times.

Lee Suk-hee can stomach much of the belt-tightening that South Korea's gasping economy has asked of her, including fewer shopping sprees and more nights eating dinner at home.

But here's where the 47-year-old homemaker draws the line: Don't try to take away the free reality TV she watches on her cellphone while riding the subway every day.

"I bought this cellphone to watch television," she said during one recent underground trip. "I'd feel really bad if it went away."

It may. Reeling from declining ad revenue and mounting debt from providing the expensive service at no additional cost to subscribers, South Korean cellular operators may soon cancel subway TV coverage that has yet to turn a profit.

Read the full story here.

-- John Glionna

Rolcats: Russian Lolcats with fake translations

What do you get when you mix a Lolcat with Soviet-era quips? A Rolcat.

Lolcats is that old Internet chestnut in which people put witty, broken-English captions on photos of cats. Rolcats.com involves an Eastern Bloc twist: Russian is layered on top of the photo, followed by a funny translation.

The real Russian translation suggests that the cat can't sleep.

The meme has spread quickly around the usual blog and social media haunts within the last week. It spurred some confused onlookers to wonder aloud in the Rolcats blog comments whether these were authentic translations.

Though Rolcats does indeed take its unusual photos from a Russian-language copy-Lolcat, Kotomatrix.ru, the English translations are the creative work of the blog's mysterious author, who goes by the name Demitri.

One photo, pictured at right, shows a chubby white kitty clawing and gnawing on a rope fence. The fake translation reads, "Drat, thwarted so close to freedom's sweet caress…  I dreamed for but a taste of the decadent west, and now my eulogy is sung by guard dogs and alarm bells."

The actual Russian translation of the Kotomatrix subtext is, to put it lightly, less humorous. "What can be done about this insomnia? The advice is ...

Facebook gives users a chance to govern the site

Facebook wants to give users more transparency. Credit: Andrew Feinberg via Flickr.

The Facebook nation is getting its very own democracy.

After last week's flap over vague statements implying that Facebook would keep users' personal data even after they closed their accounts, the company today said it would allow users to help govern the site. Interested community members will be invited to review, comment and vote on these kinds of documents in the future, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

"This is really about us trusting our users," Zuckerberg said in a conference call with reporters to discuss the changes.

The Palo Alto company released draft versions of two new governing documents: "The Facebook Principles," which it calls "a set of values that will guide the development of the service," and the "Statement of Rights & Responsibilities," which emphasizes that users own their content on the site and that Facebook cannot use it once they quit the service.

"We do not own user data, they own their own data," Zuckerberg said. "We never really intended to give a different impression, and we feel bad that we did."

The governing process of Facebook includes virtual town halls, where users can comment on the changes,  and a user summary of some of the comments received.

Users can begin voting now on the draft Statement of Rights & Responsibilities. If they are approved (and if more than 30% of the community participates), all future policy changes will be eligible for a vote by users, "provided the level of intensity of user interest would justify it."

The company also intends to establish a user council, comprised of "authors of the most insightful and constructive comments on the draft documents," that will help develop and discuss other policies and practices.

Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications and public policy, said the company has learned through this controversy -- as well as those over its Beacon ad technology and "news-feed"  activity tracking -- that users are very interested in being involved in crafting policies.

"Part of the big lesson here is that we really underestimated the sense of ownership Facebook users feel over the site," he said.

-- Alana Semuels

Around the Web 2.26.09: Yahoo CFO's departure, Nokia laptops, Google tweets

Translation of Google's first Tweet: "I'm feeling lucky."

-- Google makes its first Tweet. Twitter

-- Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen is stepping down. MarketWatch

-- Intel jumps into Dell's lawsuit over the trademark rights to the hot buzz-word "netbook." Ars Technica

-- Add EMI to the list of companies that doesn't like Seeqpod. The record label sued the streaming music site and a developer who used its software tools. TechCrunch

-- As if we didn't see this coming: Netflix plans to offer streaming-only subscriptions. They're moving it all online! PaidContent.org

-- Windows 7 will make a slew of changes between beta and the Release Candidate -- 36, to be exact. Engineering Windows 7

-- Thanks to a new status dashboard, we'll know for sure if any of the Google apps are down. TechCrunch

-- In a meeting for investors, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Balmer names the company's biggest competitors: piracy and Linux. Neglecting Apple was no mistake. OS News

-- Steve Jobs will be back in June, Apple says. LAT/Associated Press

-- Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia may enter the laptop market. Which has us wondering: What's the difference between a laptop and a cellphone these days? CNET

-- Chris Lesinski