I have a PayPal account, so when I received the following email yesterday, it concerned me enough that I decided to log on to PayPal to find out more about this unauthorized change to my account: You've added an additional email address to your PayPal account. If you don.t agree…
A few days ago, I was at the Memphis Convention Center waiting for Dennis Kucinich to enter a large room to begin his press conference. The reporter sitting in front of me noticed that I was wearing credentials bearing the word “press,” credentials granted by the National Conference for Media Reform.
She asked me about “Dangerous Intersection.” I told her that it is a blog created in March 2006. I mentioned that we have a dozen participating authors and that we get about 1100 unique visitors each day.
She asked, “Would you have ever believed back in March that you would be sitting here covering a press conference of a person running for President of the United States?” It didn’t cross my mind back then. This blogging experience has taken lots of unexpected twists and turns. I jokingly told her that she was making me nervous by making the press conference seem more important–and reminding me that I am merely a citizen journalist.
(Here I am in Memphis, Citizen Journalist. The bottom of my badge reads “Press.”)
One of the main points stressed throughout the Media Reform Conference, however, was that journalism is changing rapidly. Corporate media is struggling (often because its corporate owners are muzzling its reporters) and citizen journalists are stepping into the void. Though the citizen journalists range in quality, they do include many highly qualified reporters who are having lots of fun contributing to the public discourse. Prior to this movement, most of these people …
This post is yet another entry summarizing proceedings of the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee. The conference is sponsored by Free Press.
A panel presented yesterday was entitled “Saving the Internet.” [At his plenary speech, Bill Moyers has suggested an alternate way of designating this issue: “equal access to the Internet.”] At the panel presentation, Tim Wu summarized the concept of net neutrality issue. Tim is a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in telecommunications law and copyright. In 2006, he wrote a book titled Who Controls the Internet.
Wu explain that the Internet is a meritocratic network. It is a place where we don’t need permission to speak. The aim of “net neutrality” is “to protect this no-permission” aspect of the Internet. The electric network of the Internet, itself, is a second form of neutrality. The idea is that any compatible device should be allowed to be connected to the network.
The function of net neutrality is to protect the Internet from incursions by phone companies and cable providers. If they had their way, the Internet will become like cable companies or “like the Chinese Internet,” where the provider tells you how you can use the network.
Wu previously worked with a telecommunications company. He was not proud of this, but admitted that his job was to try to sell ways to discriminate use based on content. Ironically, this is exactly what he is now concerned about. That is why he wrote a seminal paper …
It wasn’t on the original schedule of the National Conference for Media Reform, but Dennis Kucinich agreed to hold a press conference tonight. Kucinich ran for president of the United States in 2004. He has indicated that he plans to run again in 2008.
I hadn’t ever before been to to a press conference of a presidential candidate. I learned of it at the last minute. I packed my press credentials (the media reform conference granted these to me on the basis of this blog), my video camera, a still camera, a pad of paper and a couple pens and dashed to the designated area.
In his prepared remarks, Kucinich pounced on the issue of media reform. He demonstrated himself to be familiar with many aspects of media reform and the Internet. In the not-too-distant future, he intends to hold Congressional hearings on media reform (“for an entire week, if necessary”). He believes that media issues are among the most important issues facing this country today. In response to a question I asked, Kucinich said he considers the media reform to be closely related to the possibility of campaign finance reform. At the point when we have more of the former, he said, we will have the opportunity to implement the latter. Campaign finance reform should take the form of public financing, he asserted.
He invited those attending to submit their ideas for issues to explore at his media reform hearings. Foremost among those topics will be media ownership. In …
Dragon, for those who are not seen it in action, is a speech recognition software. You talk into a microphone connected to your computer and the program transcribes your words into written text. For those of you who haven’t seen the process of speech recognition before (or those who have only seen earlier versions of voice recognition software), the current version works like magic.
Who could make good use of speech recognition software? Anyone who writes. That probably includes you. All of you bloggers, take note. Same for all of you professionals. For instance, I work as a lawyer and I spend an hour or two each day using Dragon.
I have worked with Dragon ever since Version 6. It is now up to Version 9. I use the “Preferred” version of Dragon 9, which costs about $160. The software comes with a microphone in the box. The software is loaded with a vast vocabulary of legal and medical terms, something to keep in mind for those of you who might otherwise be tempted to jump to the vastly more expensive Legal or Medical versions of Dragon. For most people, there’s no need to make that jump, in my opinion.
There are millions of people out there who could make good use of voice recognition software. Dragon allows you to give your hands a break, even if you are a proficient typist. Dragon works so well that it seems like magic. No, I do not own any stock in Nuance …