Raquel’s post and Peter’s reponse reminded me of two services for journalists looking for a source. Help a reporter out and Profnet are places reporters can seek out people with particular knowledge.Profnet is better with academic sources.

Pros: they’re fast. You can get the query out broadly.

Cons: if your query is specific someone could steal your story. They’re run by PR people so sources require vetting (Sourcewatch provides help). These are people who want to be found by reporters, so they’re not always the best sources.

I first heard of Gever Tulley and his Tinkering School a couple of months ago on the NPR news program, All Things Considered. Any body who wants to put power tools, fire, and knives into the hands of children is ok in my book. I wanted to know more. I did a search and found that he had done a TED talk. I think the nine minute video is well worth the time but the part that is germaine to our study here is his fifth item. He encourages kids to violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). He mentions in his talk how he has  the children do this:

1. buy a song on I-Tunes
2. write it to a CD
3. rip the CD to an MP3
4. play it

 but he doesn’t say what the conversation is that accompanies the activity. Read more…

The New York Times has a Bloomberg News report that the SEC is investigating a false report on CNN’s citizen journalist web site that Steve Jobs had a heart attack. The story sent Apple’s stock into a swoon.

Read more…

They were not very creative, but if you are a 2.0 journalist, you may like ReportingOn. Instead of answering the Twitter famous question “What are you doing?”, you will answer “What are you reporting on?”, using the same 140 characters. The website was launched last Wednesday and it is very fresh.

ReportingOn is a project of Knight News Challenge, open beta, and it doesn’t restrict access only to professional journalists. It totally fits the ”We are all journalists now” concept.

People in Taiwan use MSN very often. 40% Internet users use MSN, which means 5 million users in Taiwan. We use MSN to communicate with friends, colleagues and even bosses!! (sounds terrible, right?) Just Image that, Americans ask friends’ for Facebook accounts, but Taiwanese ask for MSN accounts. That’s what happens in Taiwan.

A web developing company “Wamsn” launched a service this March which attracted 140 thousand users in 3 month rapidly. Users can invite a goddess, “Matsu” to your MSN list. You can type in questions and get feedback for her.
Read more…

 Have you ever lost your laptop? If not just imagine that one day your laptop is no longer in your possession. Now thanks to Adeona ( a tracking software) you can track your laptop in case it gets lost or stolen.  This software was developed here at the University of Washington by Ph.D.  students and faculty members from Computer Science and Engineering.  This is an open source software package. 

For more information visit Adeona’s webpage: http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/

Got Twitter?

National Public Radio is calling on you to help fact check tonight’s vice presidential debate.

Use #factcheck in your Twitter feeds if you find anything questionable claims from either candidate.

It’ll be hard to beat this debate, but I think this experiment might steal at least some of my attention away from the debate tonight.

Follow nprpolitics during the debate for updates as well.

An interactive cinematic experience, The Outbreak poses the ultimate question to viewers: “What would YOU do in a zombie attack?” Styled like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, the movie lets you make decisions that will ultimately decide your (grisly or benevolent) fate. No pressure, right? 

Read more…