Brian Gongol
Newsweek's move to a digital-only format
They're sticking with a deliberately once-a-week publishing schedule for now. It's probably a smart move in that it allows the publication to serve an archival role -- marking how the world looks at a particular moment in time. We're so inundated with non-stop, live-streaming information from around the world that it probably should be comforting to know that there are sources to which we can turn for a review of everything that is or was important over a specific period of time. The true periodical probably has a more important role to play than ever.
The Onion: "Woman who cracked three separate iPhone screens expecting baby boy this August"
Frightening collapse of Interstate highway bridge in Washington
It may have been caused by a truck crash, but it shouldn't escape our attention that the nation needs a lot of infrastructure work. We've deferred maintenance on a lot more than just roads and bridges for a very long time.
Cyberwarfare most certainly will show up in the physical world around us
And we're woefully unprepared.
Internet cafes: Good. Illegal gambling houses: Bad.
That's how it's been adjudicated in Ohio for now
Wall Street Journal says Yahoo will buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion
That's a lot of cash, no matter who you are. But it could be a bold move by Yahoo to inflate its relevance. Tumblr is in a category that also includes Instagram -- sites that depend upon users sharing with one another, very much in a "social" way, but not in a manner that directly competes with Facebook. Tumblr counts on rapid-fire posts, sharing, and re-sharing of uncounted sources and types of content. Everyone seems to want to control the "next Facebook", but Tumblr and Instagram (which was purchased by Facebook last year) might just be the logical successors to Facebook, without actually looking much like Facebook. Yahoo, meanwhile, is about as seasoned (read: old) as an Internet company gets. Under CEO Marissa Mayer, they seem to be adopting the conglomerate model for an online company -- putting together a porfolio of services under one ownership umbrella, without actually integrating those services together, and they're treating their properties somewhat independently. For their flagship Yahoo page, they're reaching out to integrate services from other companies (like Twitter) into what they do. What's funny about that move is that many stock traders and investors actually discount the value of conventional conglomerates and pay less for them. It's not a rational thing to do of course, but the "conglomerate discount" is a widely-known phenomenon. Yet, moving from the bricks-and-mortar world into the online world, people seem to shift from discounting conglomerates to valuing them more.