The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has this scoop today on TMZ.com’s plans to launch a DC edition of its gossip-mongering site called TMZDC. For those not familiar with TMZ (stands for the “thirty-mile zone” around Hollywood), it’s a great celebrity gossip site, filled with videos and photos that capture all-things celebrity, from the mundane (a photo of Will Ferrell teaching his son soccer) to the headline-grabbing (TMZ broke the arrest of Mel Gibson and the details of his anti-semitic outbursts.)
But, will this work in DC? Tabloid TV reporter Harvey Levin, who started TMZ.com, thinks so and has been meeting with folks and recruiting freelancers in the nation’s capital.
I don’t know…DC is not Hollywood and despite their power, the people who live here are kind of nerdy, but not in a hip way. DC is the kind of place that attracts people who were captains of their high school debate teams and is filled with attorneys — serious attorneys — who are not known for their colorful behavior.
As Kurtz puts it:
Thus we could see a Washington version of those “Stars — They’re Just Like Us” shots in Us Weekly and Star that show the likes of Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz shopping and schlepping.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:28 AM | Print | Comments (0)
But who would qualify for the D.C. equivalent of TMZ’s “Star Catcher” videos? Nancy Pelosi at the dry cleaners? Karl Rove juggling his cellphone and latte at Starbucks? Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Safeway?
The American digital divide isn’t as wide as it used to be for Latinos and other minorities, but the disparity between those groups and white, affluent people still exists, albeit in a more complicated form. That’s the conclusion of a report by the Pew American and Internet Life Project released yesterday.
The good news: 56% of Latino adults and 60% of non-Hispanic blacks go online. Although the ratio for non-Hispanics whites is 70%, that’s still the majority of minority groups.
The bad news: only 29% of Latino adults have a broadband connection at home, compared to 43% of white adults and 31% of African American adults.
This broadband digital divide is keeping minorities from fully participating in the creation of Internet content by making it far more difficult to create blogs, post videos, maintain social networking pages at MySpace and so forth. Because of this, Pew associate director Susannah Fox says that the digital divide has become a “digital dimmer switch.”
Unfortunately, this gap between Hispances and minorities and non-Hispanic whites won’t narrow anytime soon. Language barriers, poor education levels and low household incomes will keep the dimmer on low, raising the importance of publicly available broadband connections at schools, libraries and other public access points.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:44 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Google is making waves today with the news that it has changed its privacy policies to shorten the time frame during which it keeps personally identifiable search data to 18 to 24 months. Google’s policy had been to keep the data on file indefinitely.
On its official blog, the company provides more detail. Although Google will keep search records on file for as long as it needs them to analyze usage patterns and system problems, search records will be “anonymized” after 18 to 24 months by, in essence, corrupting the IP addresses associated with the records.
Unless we’re legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google’s services and protect them from security and other abuses)—but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.
Although some privacy advocates decry Google’s new policy as setting a too-generous industry standard, in truth this is good news for most users. Contrary to what most people think, private search data is most likely to be misused by adversaries in litigation, not by law enforcement officials who are digging around for dirt.
To be sure, the greatest amount of harm can flow from government snooping. But the likelihood that Google searches will be subpoenaed in civil or domestic law cases is far greater. It’s an everyday occurrence for Google, Yahoo! and every ISP in the country.
Because the wheels of justice turn slowly, it can, more often than not, take at least 18 months for a lawsuit to reach the point where subpoenas are issued. Under Google’s new policy, those subpoenas will likely turn up…not much, or certainly less data than has been the case. So, fewer people might suffer the indignation of having opposing litigants paw through their most private thoughts, expressed in search format, while hunting for damaging information.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:53 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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