New York Times publishes allegations that PM's media adviser 'actively encouraged' unlawful practice while editor

The prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques while editor of the News of the World and "actively encouraged" a named reporter to engage in the illegal interception of voicemail messages, according to allegations published by the New York Times.

Coulson, who resigned as editor of the News of the World in January 2007 after its royal correspondent was jailed for intercepting voicemail messages, has always insisted that he had no knowledge of illegal activity when he edited the paper or at any time as a journalist. He told a Commons select committee last year: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

The New York Times website published a trail to a story due to appear in its Sunday magazine. It made detailed allegations likely to bring intense new pressure on Coulson and the Metropolitan police force, which stands accused of favouring Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group by cutting short its investigation, withholding crucial evidence from prosecutors and failing to inform victims of the newspaper's crimes against them. Coulson declined to comment on the allegations. The News of the World and Scotland Yard have denied all the charges.

Coulson resigned after the imprisonment of his royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, for "hacking" into the voicemail messages of eight public figures. When the Guardian revealed last year that the scandal involved other journalists at the paper and numerous other victims, Coulson said he had nothing to add to earlier denials of involvement, and the Conservative leader stood by him. David Cameron said: "I believe in giving people a second chance."

The New York Times, which has had an investigative team at work on the story since March, is citing two former News of the World journalists who specifically claim that Coulson was directly aware of his reporters' use of illegal techniques.

An unnamed former editor is quoted as claiming that Coulson talked freely about illegal news-gathering techniques, including phone-hacking, and that he personally had been at "dozens, if not hundreds" of meetings with Coulson where the subject came up. "The editor added that when Coulson would ask where a story came from, editors would reply 'We've pulled the phone records' or 'I've listened to the phone messages'."

In addition, Sean Hoare, a former reporter who used to be a close friend of Coulson, is quoted as saying that when he worked with Coulson at the Sun, he personally played recordings of hacked voicemail messages for him and that later, when he worked for Coulson at the News of the World, he "continued to inform Coulson of his pursuits. Coulson 'actively encouraged me to do it', Hoare said".

Hoare, who was sacked from the paper at a time when he had drink and drug problems, says he personally listened to the voicemail messages of celebrities such as David and Victoria Beckham and that he has spoken out now because he believes it was unfair for Goodman to get all the blame.

Coulson told the Commons media committee last year that he had never even heard Mulcaire's name and that Goodman had been the only reporter involved: "I am absolutely sure that Clive's case was a very unfortunate rogue case."

The New York Times claims to have spoken to a dozen former News of the World reporters and editors who say that phone-hacking was "pervasive" in Coulson's newsroom. "Everyone knew," according to an unnamed senior reporter. "The office cat knew." Most former reporters are unnamed, but Sharon Marshall is named as having witnessed hacking when working under Coulson from 2002-04. "It was an industry-wide thing," she said.

The paper says that Coulson ran a highly competitive newsroom "with single-minded imperiousness". Former News of the World journalists claim that there was a "do whatever it takes" mentality and that reporters were told to "get the story, no matter what". "They described a frantic, sometimes degrading atmosphere in which some reporters openly pursued hacking or other improper tactics to satisfy demanding editors," according to the New York Times.

The paper gives a specific example of the involvement of an editorial executive: "Matt Driscoll, a former sports reporter, recalled chasing a story about the soccer star Rio Ferdinand. Ferdinand claimed he had inadvertently turned off his phone and missed a message alerting him to a drug test. Driscoll had hit a dead end, he said, when an editor showed up at his desk with the player's private phone records." Driscoll was later dismissed and awarded £800,000 by a tribunal, which found that he had been bullied by Coulson.

Bill Akass, managing editor of the News of the World, dismissed the New York Times claims as "unsubstantiated". He said: "We reject absolutely any suggestion or assertion that the activities of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, at the time of their arrest, were part of a culture of wrongdoing at the News of the World and were specifically sanctioned or accepted at a senior level in the newspaper."

The New York Times goes on to quote unnamed sources from the Met suggesting that its inquiry into the phone hacking was hampered by a desire to avoid upsetting Britain's biggest selling newspaper: "Several investigators said in interviews that Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with the News of the World."

After a raid on Goodman's desk in August 2006, according to the New York Times, "several detectives said they began feeling internal pressure. One senior investigator said he was approached by someone from the department's press office, who was waving his arms in the air, saying 'wait a minute, let's talk about this'."

The investigator, who has since left Scotland Yard, added that the press officer stressed the department's "long-term relationship with News International". The investigator recalled furiously responding: "There's illegality here, and we'll pursue it like we do any other case." Scotland Yard says that operational decisions are made by police, not by press officers.

Former journalists told the New York Times that when Scotland Yard raided Goodman's desk, two senior journalists "stuffed reams of documents into trash bags and hauled them away". Police did not interview any other reporter or editor apart from Goodman. The material seized from Goodman and Mulcaire included paperwork which potentially implicated three named journalists. None was interviewed and, as the Guardian disclosed last year, the police failed to pass key paperwork to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The New York Times quotes an unnamed former senior prosecutor who was "stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything. 'I would have said we need to see how far this goes' and 'whether we have a serious problem of criminality on this news desk', said the former prosecutor."

When the case came to court, police identified eight victims of the hacking. However, the New York Times claims that the officer responsible for the inquiry, the then assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, had been shown a "target list" of names and numbers taken from Mulcaire's home which ran to eight or 10 pages and which "read like a British society directory".

The Met told prosecutors that it would approach all known victims, but failed to do so. One who was approached, the then Respect MP George Galloway, told the New York Times that police warned him that his voicemail had been intercepted but refused to tell him who was responsible.

Scotland Yard denies cutting short its inquiry or being influenced by its relationship with the News of the World. The Press Complaints Commission was criticised after two inquiries into the affair failed to find evidence of wrongdoing other than that originally presented by police.

After revelations in the Guardian, the Commons media select committee held a second inquiry into the affair last year. Its report expressed concern "at the readiness of all of those involved – News International, the police and the PCC – to leave Mr Goodman as the sole scapegoat without carrying out a full investigation".

[Updated at 1:05 p.m.] Mariner Energy, owner of the production platform, said in a press release that no hydrocarbon spill has been reported after an initial flyover of the incident.

"Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident," the statement said. "The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken. During the last week of August 2010, production from this facility averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate."

The company also said no injuries have been reported.

[Updated at 12:48 p.m.] David Reed, a paramedic on board the Rowan Gorilla II oil rig located 14 miles from the platform that exploded told submitted an iReport saying he saw all thirteen workers rescued from the water.

“We were up here in the radio room and all of sudden we saw a whole bunch of smoke coming from the platform," Reed said. "Shortly after all the radios started lighting up like a Christmas tree. They called any helicopters in the area, any boats in the area to respond, they were saying there were people in the water. There were multiple people in the water.”

See Reed's iReport of what he witnessed

WWL: Coast Guard reporting production platform incident

WDSU: Production platform explodes in Gulf

iReport: Did you see the explosion? Share images

[Updated at 12:32 p.m.] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the federal government has "assets ready" to respond to any environmental problems resulting from the explosion of an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana.

[Updated at 12:31 p.m.] All thirteen people aboard a production platform that exploded in the Gulf are accounted for and safely on a commercial vessel according to initial information, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.

"We continue to gather information as we respond with full force, and have oil spill response assets ready for immediate deployment should we receive any reports of pollution," the statement said.

[Updated at 11:53 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that 12 people from the production platform are in water immersion suits as they await rescue.

Colclough told CNN there are reports the production platform, which is for both oil and natural gas, is still on fire.

"We don't know what caused the rig to catch on fire," he told CNN, noting the incident is under investigation.

Asked about concerns regarding oil leaks or pollution, Colclough said "there are reports the rig was not actively producing any product, so we don't know if there's any risk of pollution."

Mariner Energy is a leading independent oil and gas exploration and production company in the Gulf of Mexico. About 85 percent of the company's production comes from offshore assets, with a growing share of that coming from deepwater developments.

The explosion comes nearly five months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and causing oil to gush into
the Gulf of Mexico, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

[Updated at 11:43 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that all 13 workers involved in the production platform explosion are accounted for, but one person is injured.

Coast Guard Choppers are on the way to the site 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

[Posted at 11:33 a.m.] An oil production platform has exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, with 12 people overboard and one missing, the Coast Guard said Thursday morning.

Rescue attempts are under way for at least 12 people, Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards told CNN. 13 people were on board the production platform total, Edwards said, noting 12 have been accounted for, but one person was missing.

The accident took place 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana on the Vermilion Oil production platform 380, which is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy.

The Coast Guard has multiple helicopters, an airplane and several Coast Guard cutters en route. It's unknown if there are any injuries.

Are you addicted to Twitter? Do you have an iPad? Even if the answer to both is “no” right now, after you see Twitter for iPad, those answers are going to change — quickly.

Yes, the wait is over. Launching tonight in the App Store is Twitter for iPad — the first official native iPad app from the company. We all knew it was coming (Twitter even said so a few months ago), but it has been a long wait. It was definitely worth it.

Like most people, I wander into hyperbole from time to time. But it has now been a few days since I first played with Twitter for iPad, and I still think it is hands-down the best iPad app out there. It’s that good. With all due respect to Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Pulse, this is now going to be my go-to app for just about everything related to reading news. It’s simply such a great experience for reading tweets — and more importantly, reading the links your friends share.

What Twitter has done is create an amazing user experience for reading information. This is thanks to an intuitive user interface that layers on top of itself. So, for example, if I click on a link in my tweet stream, I’ll have a new layer that rolls over to show that webpage in a customized browser window. If you’ve used Flipboard, it’s somewhat similar, but better because it’s much easier to go back to where ever you previously were before you clicked the link. You simply swipe something to the side to move it temporarily or swipe it again to get it off the screen (in portrait mode anyway, where there’s less space).

Something else that’s awesome: when you highlight a tweet by clicking on it, it’s now pinned to the top or bottom of the screen as you scroll through your stream. This is great if it’s something you want to reference. A lot of thought has been put into these type of saving state actions within this app. It’s simple to save a draft and go back to it, for example (much easier than with Twitter for iPhone). Or to reference one of these pinned tweets in your own tweet.

There are also some great new gestures that Twitter came up with for this app. For example, if you pinch-outward on a tweet, it will unfold to show you more information about the Twitter user. Better may be the way you can swipe down with two fingers on any tweet to see a full conversation in context. It’s the little things like this that make the app great — Apple-like, even.

Overall, the app looks and feels quite a bit different from Twitter for iPhone (which Twitter built from Tweetie — developer Loren Brichter’s client that they acquired earlier this year). But Twitter’s Leland Rechis assures me it’s using all the same stuff on the backend. In fact, Twitter is now a universal app — meaning it’s one app that will work on both the iPhone and iPad, it will just look different depending on which device you’re using it on.

Rechis also says Twitter started experimenting with some newer things on the iPad version that haven’t yet been brought to the iPhone version, but undoubtedly will. A great example here is that when you click through to a user’s profile page, you’ll see at the bottom a list of users similar to that user that you may like to follow.

Rechis also notes the importance of the logged-out view — something Twitter worked on before the iPhone version launch. Twitter wants to make the service as useful as possible to people even if they don’t have an account. The idea, of course, is that they’ll hopefully sign up for one — and this app may give them the most reason to yet. When logged out, you’ll be able to see tweet streams based on hot topics.

“Tweets in general are not just what I’m doing, they have an incredible amount of metadata,” Rechis says speaking to why they created this layering idea for the app. Almost 25 percent of all tweets now have a link in them, he says. This app is perfect for those tweets, and content consumption and exploration in general.

Rechis notes that one of his favorite things about tablets is how they eliminate window management. At the same time, you need some way to manage all this information. He notes that Brichter’s original concept was stacks of sheets of paper that you quickly shuffle through. Other members of Twitter including Rechis refined that idea and the end result is Twitter for iPad.

That’s roughly 750 words about the app — but you really just need to see it, and use it. It will definitely be my go-to way to browse Twitter from now on. It’s that good.

Look for it in the App Store shortly. It will be a free download.

Update: I should note that for some of these more advanced gestures, there is a slight learning curve. That said, you can do everything without using those gestures, so it’s not a big deal — it’s just icing on the cake. And yes, Twitter is trying to come up with the best way to teach users about these new gestures.

Twitter has just announced the service’s official iPad app.

It’s free and comes with a slew of touch interface bells and whistles built right in. The app is intended to allow for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other media and updates. It’s also usable even for those who don’t have Twitter accounts.

Twitter for iPad [iTunes link] has a few new UI touches that you haven’t seen elsewhere. These features are custom-designed for the larger screen and touch capabilities of the iPad. It also caters to what the iPad was made for: media consumption rather than creation. Twitter’s Leland Rechis, a mobile UX designer, writes on the Twitter blog that the iPad is “a device that really lets content shine.”

The main interface is a series of panes that can expand and retract based on the kind of content the user wants to access. “Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like,” wites Rechis.

Media viewing is optimized for the iPad, as well. Videos play in-line with other content and can be loaded while you’re browsing through your timeline. You can pinch a video to view it fullscreen, too.

Finally, Twitter has really done some interesting things with touchscreen capabilities in this app. When you pinch a tweet, you’ll see details about the author and have a list of actions you can take, including reply and retweet. A two-finger pull-down gesture will show the entire conversation around a tweet.

It’s a creative way to approach multitouch app building, and we look forward to playing with it ourselves. We’re also really looking forward to what apps may come to other tablets in the future.

The iTunes release is rolling out right now; if you can’t get the latest version of the app right now, wait a bit and try again. And of course, let us know what you think of Twitter for iPad in the comments.

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We are in no way endorsing careening down highways on this busy Labor Day Weekend, but if you're interested in where police speed traps and cameras ...

By Ryan Chittum The New York Times Magazine is out with a riveting story on the corruption at News Corporation's News International division. It's a fascinating look at the depravity and cynicism of the British tabloid press and of the British government. Scotland Yard failed abjectly to fully investigate what News of the World and others did by illegally breaking into people's...

The plot thickens!

While two official Apple pages tout an ability to use Facebook to find friends on its new social music offering in ITunes called Ping, which would be very useful, the feature is now not available on the service.

CEO Steve Jobs, in fact, told me at the Apple (AAPL) event where Ping and more was unveiled yesterday that the lack of Facebook integration was due to unspecified “onerous terms” that the social networking giant had sought and Apple declined.

Which is why it is odd that Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller said in the interview below that I also did at the confab minutes apart that “you can use your Facebook contacts to find friends who are also on Ping and hook up to them.”

So what happened? A last-minute yanking of Facebook, it appears.

BoomTown has inquiries into all the parties, but until then, here my video interview of Schiller talking about Ping’s Facebook love before it was spurned in a Silicon Valley mystery and more yesterday:

Thanks to a partnership with Vlingo, owners of Android 2.0 or higher-equipped phones can now check in to Foursquare and update their status on Facebook and Twitter simply by speaking into their phones.

To try it out, download the free Vlingo app to your Android handset.

Using your voice, you can then update your location status on Foursquare by saying “check into Logan Airport”, locate your friends with commands like “where are my friends?” and “who’s nearby?” as well as send shout-outs to your buddies (e.g. “shout at Logan Airport waiting to board a plane to San Francisco”).

That’s not all though. The latest version of the Vlingo app also lets users share the service with their friends with the click of a button and also update their status on Facebook, Twitter and/or Foursquare at the same time by saying “social update” and speaking the message.

Previous Vlingo features remain, too: you can still use the app to send text and email messages, search the web, use Google maps and more.

As for BlackBerry, iPhone and Nokia S60 users – they’ll have to be patient for a while before they can start updating their status and locations with their voice.

Vlingo says it plans to roll out this functionality to other supported platforms in a future release but didn’t mention specific dates.

Do you consider voice-driven applications to be an ideal way to interact with mobile apps on your phone? Why (not)?

Longtime CBS News broadcaster Dan Rather came to The Poynter Institute this week to talk about what it was like to cover some of the world's biggest stories throughout the past half-century.

I sat down with him to hear his thoughts on the state of the news industry and how to improve it. Rather shared his take on the untold stories in politics; the effectiveness of sites that fact-check the news; and the ways in which his experience with bloggers during the Killian documents controversy still shapes his view of them today.

Big businesses' negative impact on political news coverage

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		You can read a full transcript of the interview here. Rather: 'If we'd had spell check back then I'd still be in the newspaper business'

Rather, who is now anchor and managing editor of HDNet's "Dan Rather Reports," said too much of today's political coverage is reduced to horse-race reporting and public opinion polling. Such polls are valuable to the extent that they can provide a snapshot of a given moment, he said, but that moment changes.

The 78-year-old advocated for deeper investigative reporting that looks at the money involved in politics, and he suggested that journalists ask: "Who is giving what to whom, expecting to get what?"

'"The public is not well-served by political coverage as it is today," said Rather, who did not exclude himself from this criticism. "In many important ways, very big business is in bed with big government and whoever's in power in Washington, whether it be Republicans or Democrats ... and this seriously affects news coverage."

Too often, he said, political coverage is governed by the large corporate entities that own news organizations and that don't always have the public's best interest in mind.

"An independent, a truly independent and truly free press, a fiercely independent but necessary press," Rather said, "is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy, and it's absolutely essential to our system."

Political fact-checking sites need to expand reach

Rather said he doesn't think PolitiFact and other efforts to fact-check political news reach a wide enough audience, despite efforts to expand. Still, he applauds them.

"This is what every good newspaper, every television station, every network ought to be doing. But in so many cases -- it's not unanimous, there are some exceptions -- but by and large, this is not what they do," Rather said. "So often, particularly covering politics, enterprises that describe themselves as journalistic enterprises, and journalists who describe themselves as journalists, in fact just become transmission belts."

He said journalists can quickly become transcribers who simply write down what they hear without asking tough questions, partly out of fear that they'll seem unpatriotic.

Leading up to the Iraq war, most journalists blindly accepted the government's statements without checking to see if the information matched up with the facts, he said. (There were some exceptions, Rather said, such as McClatchy's Washington bureau, which didn't accept the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.)

"What happened in the run-up to the Iraq war is that the administration of that time commanded the narrative, and the press bought that narrative," Rather said. "And this led to, by any reasonable objective analysis, a strategic blunder of historic proportions."

"Highly partisan, political" nature of the blogosphere

Rather has acknowledged that he never realized the power of bloggers until after he reported the infamous story about the Jerry B. Killian documents that criticized Bush's service in the Army National Guard. At the time, conservative bloggers questioned whether the documents were falsified and began a debate about it online. No one has yet to prove the authenticity of the documents.

Rather said the Killian controversy shows how the blogosphere lacks accountability and can be used for "highly partisan, political and ideological purposes." He stood by his belief that, despite what all the bloggers said at the time, the Killian story was true.

"It was true then, it's true now, and evidence of that is neither the president nor anyone close around him, so far as I know, (and I think I would know if they had), has ever denied the narrative of the story," Rather said. "I don't seek to go over this ground all over again, but I do think it's important to point out that the story was true, and for those who didn't like the story, for their partisan, political, or ideological reasons, that's the reason they had to attack it so fiercely and, as it turned out, so effectively, I'm sorry to say."

Need for new business models to replace old one

Despite the growing influence of online news, Rather said he still thinks we're in the early stages of the Internet's potential. He called for more original, shoe-leather reporting on the Internet and less aggregated content, particularly when it comes to international and investigative coverage.

The old business model for news is crumbling, he said, and the Internet has not yet risen in its place. He's said before that he wishes President Barack Obama would form a commission to help save journalism jobs and establish new business models.

"In the past when we've had these crises, for the automobile business, for the early stages of the microchip business, for the steel business and what have you, it's not that unusual for the president to call together the best minds and say we may or may not have the government intervene," Rather said. "I thought it would be a good idea for him to call together some of the brightest people in the country, including those in journalism but not confined to that, and say, let's see what we can do."

The idea has not gone anywhere, and Rather said he doesn't think it will anytime soon.

Social media is "increasingly important" in politics

Twitterers criticized Rather earlier this year for making what some believed to be a racially-charged comment about Obama's efforts to get health care legislation passed. Rather later responded to the buzz on Twitter, saying, "Much of what we tweet, or post, or chat away at under the guise of news, are distractions."

Rather told me he's since found that, in general, social networking sites can be an important tool for journalists.

"I think it's increasingly important in politics and in business and in personal relationships to have these so-called social media. And I think there'll be more of them, not fewer," he said. "Some of them will go by the wayside. Twitter is the big thing now. Who knows what's going to be post-Twitter."

Though Rather has both a Twitter and Facebook account for "Dan Rather Reports," he said he doesn't spend much time updating them because he'd rather be doing what he likes best -- being out in the field reporting.

A picture is worth a thousand words. But if you include an entire database, make it interactive, and add filtering options, the word-to-picture exchange rate is even better.

Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

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1. Google’s Appetite for Acquisition

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Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

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2. Gay Marriage Chronology

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The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

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3. IED Attacks from Wikileaks’ Afghanistan War Logs

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The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

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4. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

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On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

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5. CIA World Factbook Dashboard

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The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

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6. Geography of a Recession

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This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

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7. Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Violence Map

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The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

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8. What Does the Health Care Bill Mean to Me?

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Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

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9. Obama’s $787 Billion Economic Stimulus Plan

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The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

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10. American Casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond

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This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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More Graphics Resources from Mashable:

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Reviews: Google

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BuzzFeed, which tracks online topics that have gone viral, is offering a version of the analytical dashboard it uses to monitor the spread of Internet “memes” to any website, brand or publisher that wants to track the popularity of their content. To demonstrate the dashboard’s features, BuzzFeed — which is run by viral marketer and Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti — has opened up its own internal version of the tool to show all its traffic statistics, including the performance of individual stories on the BuzzFeed site and where the traffic came from.

The dashboard tracks what the site calls “seed views” — representing readers who looked at the content on BuzzFeed’s site or on one of its partners’ websites — and “viral views,” which are readers who came from somewhere else, after finding the item on Twitter, Facebook, Digg or some other content-sharing network. While a recent story about the best anti-Glenn-Beck signs at a rally got about 16,000 views on BuzzFeed directly, it got almost five times that many “viral views” from other sources. The dashboard shows the story got over 19,000 pageviews via Huffington Post, more than 18,000 via Reddit, and over 10,000 from Facebook. It was shared 900 times on Facebook and drew more than 1,000 “likes” from readers there, as well as 2,800 clicks.

Peretti said in an email interview that BuzzFeed has been using the viral dashboard to build not just its own site and track the spread of its content, but to put together viral advertising campaigns for clients such as Viacom, GE, and Intel as part of the company’s marketing consulting business. “We decided that it was time to make a big move and make the viral dashboard public, so everyone can see the internal stats we use to grow the company,” the BuzzFeed founder said. The site will be making the dashboard available free of charge to anyone who wants to use it later this month, Peretti said, and sites can also apply for early beta access to the tool.

BuzzFeed’s new offering could find a receptive audience; more and more web publishers are looking to real-time analytical tools to track how their content is performing on a minute-by-minute basis, rather than (or in addition to) using existing tools that look at traffic statistics over a longer time period. Chartbeat, which provides a broader package of overall web traffic analytics for websites, recently raised a funding round of $3 million from Index Ventures and a group of other VCs. BuzzFeed itself raised an $8-million Series B round of financing earlier this year from RRE Ventures, along with Ron Conway’s SV Angel and Chris Dixon’s Founder Collective.

Here’s a presentation that Peretti did on how to make your content go viral by using what he calls the “Bored at Work” network.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): With Caffeine, Google Reveals the Challenges of Real-Time

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By Brady Dennis When fall classes began Wednesday at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Warren was scheduled to be teaching contract law to first-year students. But something happened on the way to the chalkboard. "I'm writing to let you know that Professor Jerry Frug will be teaching your Contracts class this term instead of Professor Elizabeth Warren," law school dean Martha Minow wrote to students on Tuesday, according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post. "Professor Warren regrets that she will not be able to teach you this fall and we regret the last minute change." Last-minute change? Cue up another round of speculation about whether President Obama is about to tap Warren to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The watchdog, created by the massive financial overhaul bill signed into law in July, is aimed at protecting borrowers from abuses in mortgages, credit cards and other such

Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up its 160 million existing iTunes users.

No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping.

Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. I think it could have tremendous impact on social sharing and commerce.

From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we see, music we listen to and books we are reading. These are accepted social norms. In fact, many relationships are made on the basis of collective love of a movie and many friendships have started with mixed tapes.

It makes perfect sense for a music service to be social. I’m not alone: The popularity YouTube, the fast-growing MOG and the sadly defunct iLike and Imeem show that people gravitate towards music as a common, collective experience. A recommendation from friends on Last.fm often resulted in me buying many-a-few music tracks. My friends who listened to Thievery Corporation turned me on to The Broadway Project and Chris Joss, which I ended up buying on the iTunes store or via Amazon’s MP3 store.

This click-and-go-somewhere-to-download model of affiliate links can never match a unified experience. Amazon, for example, encourages bloggers and others to link to things they like and then get a piece of the action. This separates social from commerce and treats them as two discrete activities. On the post-Facebook Internet, I don’t think anyone can afford to keep these two actions distinct.

Ping, from what little I saw during Steve Jobs’ demo, allows a similar level of social interaction. It can tell me who my friends think are cool and the top 10 favorites of people in my social graph. Some of my friends are famous deejays. Others just have eclectic musical tastes. They can collectively sift through over 10 million songs and help with the discovery of music. This social-powered discovery is part of the biggest theme of our times: serendipity. About two years ago, when I wrote about serendipity, I said:

The problem is that there’s too much data coming online too quickly, and the traditional method of search that involves first finding and then consuming the information is not going to work for much longer. There just won’t be enough time for us to do that and still have a life. It’s a problem, and therefore solving it is an opportunity — a very big opportunity.

My belief has only been affirmed by growth in the amount of data available. With 12 million songs and 250,000 apps, the best way for Apple to enhance the iTunes store – aka its shopping experience — is through the use of social. Back in 2007, I argued that social networking was merely a feature that had to be embedded into applications to enhance their value. Apple has done a great job of that, but it’s also gone one step further, not only by adding a social networking layer to iTunes, but by meshing it with its commerce engine, the iTunes Store. And it’s made this experience available on both the desktop and its devices.

Apple received much of this social capability with the acquisition of Lala, an online music service, which as a standalone company used sharing of social objects to drive folks towards paid music downloads. Now Apple is only closing the loop by further sharing what users bought. I wouldn’t be least bit surprised if sales of music on the iTunes store rocket upwards, thanks to social discovery.

Amazon, which recently started experimenting with Facebook Connect, has similar ideas, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. On Amazon, I’m reduced to reading reviews from absolute strangers for music. I have a handful of friends who have impeccable taste in non-fiction business books, are all members of Amazon, and they already use email to share new book suggestions with me.

What if they too could share their likes and dislikes via a social layer inside Amazon.com? Or what if I could follow my favorite authors and get updates on their books? Much like Apple, Amazon owns book-based social service, Shelfari, and should find ways to embed the social layer inside of all Amazon products and connect its tens of millions of users.

Like Apple, Amazon too has a lot more data about its customers and their behaviors and could create a compelling discovery experience. I believe with tens of thousands of products in its store, the retail giant needs to figure out ways to surface content and other offerings smartly.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Why Google Should Fear the Social Web

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A couple of months back, WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show asked listeners who have moved to or away from New York some questions. They asked current zipcode, previous zipcode, year of move, and some other questions. BLS then posted the data and let information and data folk have a go at it. Here are the results.

My favorite is Moritz Stefaner's interactive (above). You've seen his stuff around here before. Red indicates more moving out and blue indicates more people moving in. The New York area is enlarged in the white circle since most moves happened within the state, and the rest are placed using a damped distance function. Updating bar graphs on the right provide more context. Check it out, even if just for the cool factor.

A static look of the data by designer Andrea Stranger is pretty interesting too. The map below shows moves from 2000 to 2010, and it's accompanied by smaller maps for each year.

Check out the rest here. Some good stuff in there.

• Where Americans are moving
• New York Times on how they design their graphics
• My Last Day as a New York Times Graphics Editor Intern

After months of speculation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs finally revealed the new and improved Apple TV today. It has a lot going for it, including a low $99 price, redesigned hardware, and access to streaming media from the iTunes store.

At the same time, I can’t help but be disappointed — an opinion shared by Forrester analyst James McQuivey. Instead of being a revolutionary upgrade, the new Apple TV is just a smaller and cheaper iteration on what Apple has done before. Meanwhile, Google announced its Google TV service earlier this year — which will bring many of the Apple TV’s additions (Netflix, Pandora), alongside full access to the web on your TV, the ability to subscribe to audio and video podcasts, and more.

After Apple’s announcement today, I’m still far more excited for Google TV.

Google’s aim isn’t just to offer another device that connects to your TV to deliver media. Rather, it’s going for a full-scale redefinition of the way we watch TV. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of channels with a clunky channel guide, you can use Google TV’s search to find content from live TV, your DVR, or web video instantly. Instead of waiting for Apple to include access to the hottest new web video site on Apple TV, you can simply browse to the site and view the video with Google TV’s web browser, which also has full Adobe Flash support.

And instead of hoping that Apple brings apps to the Apple TV, you can get access to the Android Market right on Google TV — which could conceivably allow a video streaming service like Boxee to find a home on Google’s platform.

Google is working with TV manufacturers and cable/satellite providers to integrate the service into TVs and set-top boxes, which could help put an end to ugly TV programming guides and other terrible user interface forced upon couch potatoes. This is the key to Google’s plan: Instead of going out and buying a separate device, users will inevitably get access to Google TV by default through their cable/satellite provider, or when they purchase a new TV. For those of us who want it right away, Google is working together with Logitech for a Google TV set-top box called the Revue.

Strangely enough, when it comes to this particular battle, Apple has the distinct price advantage. Many users wouldn’t think twice about spending $99 for the Apple TV experience — particularly if they don’t have any other way to get Netflix on their televisions. The Logitech Revue, meanwhile, doesn’t have a set price yet, but we can expect it to be between $200 and $300. Its internals are significantly more complex, whereas the new Apple TV is a stripped down device running the same mobile hardware as the iPhone 4.

Apple’s price lead won’t last forever though — you can bet that by next year, there will be a Google TV box around or under $99 as well. And if all goes according to plan, Google TV isn’t something  many customers should have to worry about buying anyway — it will be a part of their normal TV experience by default.

Apple will certainly sell truckloads of Apple TVs this holiday season, and probably for some time next year as well. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s Google TV that will significantly affect the shape of TV watching in the future. Apple could update the Apple TV to support apps, but even then it’s still locked down to a single box that users will have to buy.

Meanwhile, Google TV will have the same advantage as Google’s Android mobile operating system — it will be everywhere, making it unstoppable.

Tags: Apple TV, Google TV, Video

Companies: Apple, Google

People: Steve Jobs

The man who held three hostages at the Discovery Communications building in Maryland told NBC News in a brief telephone conversation that he had explosives.

Discovery Communications - Maryland - NBC - United States - Police

Jesus Lord, iTunes 10 is ugly. It's so ugly! From the dock logo to the buttons to the icons to the spacing to even little tiny things, like the shade of the grey background and the shade of the fonts and the recasting of the volume bar—everything about it seems hideous, clunky, metallic; it feels impossible to get one's little trackpad to navigate these blocky boxy things. Is there not a senior gay in Apple product design to throw up his hands and send a design like this back to the youngsters? I know there's decided gay presence in the retail store design, which explains why their stores are largely so successful in terms of siting and presentation and flow and drama. But this—this is garbage!

Of all topics, this is one of the perennials. People want more traffic, more attention, more awareness to their blog. It’s fair. We work hard on our blogs. We want more attention and traffic. If your business depends on volume, this is especially important (for instance, if you’re using ads). Getting traffic is a tricky business, and it requires a lot of experimentation. I’ll tell you what’s worked for me, so far, and I’ll tell you what you might try. Maybe others will educate us both in the comments on their best methods.

Great Titles Help

The first few seconds of someone’s attention are the hardest to pass. If you have a lame blog post title, no one’s going to want to read the post. For whatever reason, we react to “how to,” we react to “7 great,” we react to all kinds of things. Not sure where to look? I stole this advice from Brian Clark years ago: go to the grocery store, buy some ladies’ magazines like Cosmopolitan, and learn how THEY write headlines on the front page.

Graphics Don’t Hurt

This entire series (and most of my blog posts) use graphics to catch your eye. It’s an easy way to get one’s attention. Screen captures help. Video helps. There are tons of ways to get people into a receptive space with your material, and graphics are just the easiest one.

Now that we’ve got a decent title, decent graphics, let’s be quick about your content.

Brevity Is the Game

Keep your posts brief (unless you want tons and tons of bookmarks). People don’t have all day to read. If you can keep your posts between 250-500 words, that’s in alignment with most people’s attention spans. Hey, you’re welcome to write whatever length you want. You asked me how to grow traffic to your blog. I can only give you results that I’ve tested. When I write a super long piece, I get much less involvement with it.

Share Your Blog

I’ve written about making shareability a priority. If you don’t have easy-to-share buttons on your blog, you’re missing the easiest way for people to see your stuff on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and all the other sites where it would matter. Sharing out is a great way to make some more traffic happen. I also automatically push my posts into Facebook with their notes feature. I have an automated post into twitter via @broganmedia, but don’t do this same effect on my primary @chrisbrogan account.

Subscriptions or No?

In my case, subscriptions to my blog matter. I want people to subscribe, because I don’t necessarily survive on ad revenue. If you’re trying to monetize via ad revenue, and if your ads are in the header and the sidebar, a subscription really won’t help you get more traffic. If for whatever reason you want people to come to your website directly instead of via your RSS feed, you might want to obfuscate where you put your subscription information.

If you’re like me, you ask for the subscription all the time. In fact, I’ll ask now. You’re not yet subscribed? Enter your email (I respect your privacy):

Guest Posts

Over in the Third Tribe, we talk about guest posts quite often as a great traffic-builder to your blog. Find someone who has a very similar kind of blog topic to yours (not sure where to start? Check out Alltop), and offer a guest blog post. Oh, and then actually follow through. I have heard recently from my friends who accept guest posts that often, people ask for something, get approval, and then don’t take an action. That doesn’t sound like a good plan. Just FYI.

Consistency

This is one of those points where people disagree. I blog daily. Truth be told, I’m up to 2x a day most days. Why? Because the more I blog, the more people subscribe. I learned it from some of the larger blogger sites out there.

Lots of people justify once a week, or once every two weeks. That’s fine. But if you want to grow traffic to your blog, that’s a very long slow crawl towards that growth. That said, no matter which frequency you’ve chosen, stick to it. The moment you drop off the map, people who haven’t yet subscribed to you lose sight and move on.

Market Your Blog

You can always market your blog the good old fashioned way. I’ve had people hand me business cards at events that had a compelling question or interesting graphic, and then a URL to their blog. More often than not, I’ll at least check out the post. You might make postcards and bring them to the places where your prospective readers might congregate. For instance, if you write a restaurant blog, why not have a business card tray by the mints? Make an offer, just like you do with any other kind of marketing.

Often times, we sit around inside the fishbowl of social media and hope people from outside will find us. Here’s a hint, hero: the people you need are out there wondering what they can do to learn more about the thing you’re talking about. Go get ‘em, tiger.

How Do You Grow Traffic To Your Blog?

I’m a big fan of the basics: write about what they need, make sure they see that you wrote about it, make it easy to carry on the relationship, make it easy for them to promote you to others.

Seems like a simple formula, and yet, we go through all kinds of hoops to come up with trickier methods. Try this one first. What do you say?

As he was boasting that Apple is activating 230,000 iOS devices a day at Apple’s San Francisco event yesterday, Steve Jobs took the opportunity to accuse competitors of boosting their numbers when it comes to device activations.

“We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers,” said Jobs, most probably referring to the recent figures from Google, whose Eric Schmidt claimed 200,000 activations daily in August 2010.

Google has quickly responded to Jobs’ allegations. In a response to an inquiry from Fortune, a Google spokesperson said: “The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.”

So there you have it: according to Google, it might even have more than 200,000 Android device activations every day. Who do you trust: Apple or Google?

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Reviews: Android, Google

More About: android, apple, Google, iOS, steve jobs