It’s widely accepted that Twitter is where news breaks, and apps like Instagram and even Vine have become complementary tools in a contemporary journalist’s arsenal. But Wikipedia? Researchers, including an engineer over at Google, have built what might be the first breaking news app that feeds off of Wikipedia edits to point out the power of Wikipedia for identifying breaking news as it happens.
Two explosions rocked the Boston Marathon, causing widespread injuries. The earliest reports and images began flowing in from social media. According to a Boston Globe tweet, “dozens of people have been seriously injured”. Below are first-hand reports and images as they come in, including live social media updates from official sources. WARNING: content is graphic.
LinkedIn announced on Thursday it has acquired mobile news aggregation startup Pulse, as Kara Swisher reported last month that it would, signaling another step by the massive professional network toward becoming an online content powerhouse.
It’s a big buy for LinkedIn, costing a cool $90 million, according to the company.
The app, which collects news articles from a range of topics chosen by users and presents them in a clean, stylish format, rose to the top of Apple’s App Store ranks just a few years ago, quickly becoming a favorite among the many newsreaders currently available. Pulse currently claims more than 30 million users globally who read more than ten million stories daily using the app.
I like unique and interesting design projects and I love to feature them here for extra exposure and to inspire this site’s readers. This project has the basic idea of compressing news articles into one symbolic icon illustration relevant for the subject. It is a neat result from combining the creative expression with news coverage.
This is an innovative idea, a concept which makes icons usable not only for folders, buttons or calendars, but also for news headlines. It is a challenge more creative than usual and the design community loves it.
Your freelance business is doing something great—no, colossal—and you want to share the news with the world! Before you start emailing your press release and calling every newspaper, magazine, blogger, radio and TV station in the tri-state area, take a deep breath and make a plan.
As the editor of two glossy magazines, I know a thing or two about how to pitch someone like me. There is a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it. You don’t want to alienate the people who have the power to give you press, so here are some suggestions on how to make a great first impression...
This could really be happening. Just weeks after a baby girl was functionally cured of the HIV virus, early treatment has been found to put HIV into seemingly permanent remission in 14 adults. It's breathtaking progress in the fight against HIV.
The 14 patients were part of a group of 70 examined at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. They all began receiving anti-retroviral (ARV) medications between 35 days and 10 weeks of contracting the virus. The patients then stayed on the drugs for an average of three years, but all eventually stopped. ARV drugs can keep HIV in check, but can't totally remove it from your system. And typically, when you stop taking the drugs, the virus re-emerges. Except, that hasn't happened with these 14 patients.
North Korea amplified its threatening rhetoric as the U.N. Security Council approved new sweeping sanctions, vowing to launch a first-strike nuclear attack against the United States and threatening to engulf Washington in a "sea of fire."
An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for "a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.
At a mass rally in Pyongyang on Thursday, Army Gen. Kang Pyo Yong told the crowd that North Korea is ready to fire long-range nuclear-armed missiles at Washington.
"Intercontinental ballistic missiles and various other missiles, which have already set their striking targets, are now armed with lighter, smaller and diversified nuclear warheads and are placed on a standby status," Kang said. "When we shell (the missiles), Washington, which is the stronghold of evils, .... will be engulfed in a sea of fire."
Medical researchers announced today that, for the first time, a child born with an HIV infection appears to have been cured. Doctors are hopeful that the results may be replicated and used to treat infants infected via pregnancy or delivery in the first few days of life.
According to the National Institutes of Health, a two-year old child born with HIV — the virus responsible for AIDS — is now "functionally cured" of the infection following the early administration of antiretroviral therapy. Doctors initially detected small levels of the virus in the baby, concluding that the infection occurred before the infant's premature birth in July 2010, and began treatment of a liquid antiretroviral around 30 hours of age. The infant's HIV-infected mother reportedly had received no antiretroviral medication or prenatal care, and was unaware she had been infected with the virus. After 18 months of treatment, the child was taken off therapy "for reasons that are unclear," but doctors say that despite ending treatment the child now has no identifiable levels of HIV in the body.
Scientists say it's an unprecedented development; according to NIH, it's the first well-documented case of an HIV-infected child who has been cured of the infection. According to The New York Times, the lead author on today's report, Dr. Deborah Persaud of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, says that "it's proof of principle that we can cure HIV infection if we can replicate this case." Persaud says that "for pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown," in reference to the only other person known to have been cured of HIV. Brown, an adult, was cured via a risky bone-marrow transplant that's difficult to replicate.
Retailer Office Depot today announced plans to buy competitor OfficeMax (no, they're actually not the same company) in an all-stock deal Bloomberg estimates to be worth $1.17 billion. Both chains also sell their fair share of electronics ranging from PCs and laptops to tablets and printers. The merger, which is likely to avoid any major scrutiny from regulators, would combine the second and third largest office supply retailers in the US; both companies lag behind rival and market leader Staples. The Wall Street Journal reported discussions of a buyout Monday.
Hactivist group Anonymous has hacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the name of Aaron Swartz, threatening to leak sensitive government documents if the feds don't reform the justice system, CNET reports.
The collective posted a manifesto regarding "Operation Last Resort," along with a set of encrypted files that it claims have "enough fissile material for multiple warheads."
Anonymous won't specify the contents of the files at issue but said it would start leaking the documents, with heavy redactions, to one media outlet "at a regular interval commencing today," according to CNET.
he 25 largest banks in the country had a rather exciting first week of January. According to data released by the Federal Reserve, depositors withdrew an astounding $114.1 billion during the week ending January 9. A significant portion of this withdrawal can be attributed to the expiration of the Transaction Account Guarantee (TAG) program.
The TAG program provided extra insurance protection for depositors, ensuring their balances, in case their bank becomes insolvent. Extending TAG was part of the fiscal cliff negotiations, but it didn’t make it into the final agreement.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, J.J. Abrams is in late negotiations to direct the new Star Wars movie, Episode VII. The film is set to have a 2015 release.
Yesterday, Facebook invited the media to attend an event at its headquarters on Jan. 15. "Come and see what we're building," it says ... but adds nothing more about what might actually be revealed.
The press has handled the announcement with its usual degree of calm and maturity -- and is totally freaking out, speculating wildly, and prophesying doom.
Fox News' Facebook page inspired more daily comments than any other brand page on the social media site.
Track Social, an analytics firm that monitors 10,000 brands' social activity in real time, calculated the conservative news station generated the most comments per day of 2012.
Fox News pulled in an average of 7,443.5 comments a day.
The election certainly helped. As would be expected, Fox's fans spoke out en masse upon the announcement that Obama had been reelected, making more than 6,000 comments.
Start figuring your gaming budget for 2013, because the clock is ticking down to the Xbox 720's debut at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next June. Microsoft's official Xbox blogger Major Nelson has all but officially confirmed this by posting an E3 countdown to his site with a terse three words: "And it's on…"
Tech spec rumors have already started swimming about the Xbox 720's potential 8 GB of memory and a price peg at a possible $299 for next year's holiday season. And it goes beyond the Xbox: speculation about Sony's next move concerning the PlayStation 4 are also skyrocketing now.
The thought of planning to go over a cliff may seem incomprehensible, but in a situation where you know it might happen--like you are now--you should put a plan in place.
While Washington has shown signs of inching toward a deal that would avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, that could easily fall apart. Especially considering House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) unexpectedly canceled a vote on his own proposal yesterday.
So what do you do as a small business owner to prepare? Think of it the way you do costs versus revenue. It's obviously easier to control your expenditure than it is to spur revenue growth. A similar issue exists with the fiscal cliff. You can't control it, so focus on what you can control.
It's official: Psy's "Gangnam Style" is the first video ever to hit a billion views on YouTube.
For most mortals on video sharing networks, hitting the 1 million views milestone is a feat. For Psy's dance hymn, which was uploaded to YouTube on July 15, millions of views are racking up every hour. It took approximately three hours for the video to go from 995 million to a billion.
In the fiscal cliff horse trading, President Obama wants a tax increase on anyone earning over $250,000. (However, here’s the latest update to this story: In Tax Hike Haggle, Obama at $400K, Boehner at $1M: Now What?) House Speaker Boehner and the Republicans? No tax increase, thank you. But now the Speaker has signaled that tax hikes on those earning over $1 million would be OK. See Fiscal Cliff Talks: GOP Poses Millionaire Tax-Rate Increase.
It’s compromise time as the fiscal cliff moved ever closer. And Mr. Boehner doubtless thinks the spending cuts he wants in return–and the need for some kind of deal–make it worthwhile. See Boehner Agrees To A Millionaire Tax–And Moves Closer To A Fiscal Cliff Deal. After all, the Bush Era cuts are expiring and there’s no patch in sight.
The recently opened S.E.A. Aquarium in Singapore has laid claim to the throne of the biggest water tank in the world. The aquarium, which opened on November 22 of this year, contains over 800 species of marine animals, swimming in almost 12 million gallons of water. Nearly 100,000 animals are spread across its 10 different zones and 49 habitats. It also houses the world’s largest single viewing panel — approximately 118 feet wide by 27 feet tall.
Archeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences in North Korea claim they have found the "lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong." Yes, folks. A unicorn. The unicorn that their good old King used to ride back in the day.*
According to the official Korean News, King Tongmyong was the founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (277BC to 668AD). The archeologists say the unicorn's lair "is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with [the] words Unicorn Lair stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392)."
