I produced this video for Jon Loomer, a marketing expert who specializes in helping organizations leverage Facebook to drive their business goals.
The idea was to animate a fast-moving timeline that built up into a tower in a way that illustrates how rapidly Facebook is constantly evolving. I chose the music because I thought it reflected sort of a Tetris vibe.
Check out Jon Loomer’s Facebook page for more information about how he can help your business leverage Facebook.
The Washington Post deserves a Pulitzer Prize for its investigative story on “Top Secret America,” a two-year probe that exposes the secret national intelligence network the Federal Government built after 9/11.
It published its first story on Monday and plans on revealing the rest of its series throughout the week, which you can read on its website.
Part 1 sheds light on a national security system so large and complex, not even the President can control every agency involved. An estimated 845,000 people (1.5 times the population of Washington D.C.) have “top-secret security access” to the system. Only a select few people called Super Users in the Defense Department even have the ability to know every department’s activities. But as one Super User said, the system is so enormous and complex, “I’m never going to live long enough to be briefed on everything.”
After being put in charge of reviewing the most secret programs, Retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines – who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq – told the Post that no authority exists with the ability to manage this system.
“I’m not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities,” he said in an interview. “The complexity of this system defies description.”
The Washington Post concludes that the United States now has four branches of government: The President, Congress, The Supreme Court… and an uncontrollable network of secret government agencies and private military contractors with access to unlimited, undisclosed funding.
That was a brief description of how it introduced its three-part series. According to the Post, Tuesday’s article will explain how much the country depends on private military contractors. Wednesday’s article will portray an example of a Top Secret American community. And the newspaper features a comprehensive database that reveals private companies involved, locations of government agencies, secret connections and more information than anyone could ever ask for on the topic.
I implore everyone to visit the Washington Post’s website and check it out, because this investigative journalism is exactly the way journalism should be.
The U.S. Coast Guard has banned journalists from covering the Gulf Coast oil disaster.
Anyone who comes within 65 feet of “oil spill response operations” could face up to five years in prison and a $40,000 fine.
But because these “oil spill response operations” apparently cover much of the beaches, CNN’s Anderson Cooper describes the rule as banning reporters from “anywhere we need to be,” making it “very easy to hide incompetence or failure.”
Riki Ott, a Marine toxicologist and journalist, reported that the U.S. Coast Guard has also expanded its flight restrictions. It originally prevented aircraft from flying within 3,000 feet of the leak, and now censors anyone from being able to see even the Coast from the air.
“BP is using federal agencies to shield itself from public accountability,” Ott wrote in a recent blog post. “People in coastal communities where I visited last week in Louisiana and Alabama know an inconvenient truth: BP — not our president — controls the response.”
Scientists have been begging the federal government to allow them access to the area to obtain the most basic readings of water contamination, but the government also refuses to let them into the area.
One of two things is happening: either President Obama is carelessly ignoring the PR aspect of this disaster, or the government is covering something up.
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) has launched a website to monitor the censorship.
“We are concerned about continuing reports that journalists are being denied access to sources and public places necessary for them to fully cover this important story,” AFTRA national president Roberta Reardon said in a statement. “The causes and effects of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon (oil rig) must be uncovered and analyzed, and our only hope of getting to the truth is through investigative journalism by professionals with unfettered and unfiltered access to the sources,” she added.
Google released a new app on Tuesday that reveals how much pressure it faces from nations around the world to turn over private information and to censor content.
The Government Requests tool shows the public how often each government asks Google for private data on users, or asks Google to remove websites from its search index for reasons other than copyright infringement. It also reveals what percentage of those requests Google has fulfilled.
Google VP David Drummond wrote in a blog post that Google hoped the tool would lead to greater transparency on government censorship and data requests.
“Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services… We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data,” Drummond wrote. “The vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship.”
The Government Requests Tool breaks down data from the last half of last year, between July 2009 and December 2009. But Google plans to update this data regularly.
Google admits that the information is not as accurate or comprehensive as the company would like it to be, but it plans to improve the detail and transparency of the program over time.
The app does not reveal data from China, because Google said China has classified the information as state secret.
Brazil racked up the most requests. The U.S. government made the fourth most requests of any nation.
Sec. of State Hillary Clinton met with Al Jazeera’s senior staff in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday to discuss the need to “further dialogue with Al Jazeera,” a spokeswoman for the Arabic network said.
She was later interviewed for Al Jazeera’s “From Washington” program, where she told an audience of students that Iran was moving toward military dictatorship.
“We see the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament is being supplanted and Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship,” she said. “We are planning to try to bring the world community together in applying pressure to Iran through sanctions adopted by the United Nations that will be particularly aimed at those enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is, in effect, supplanting the government of Iran.”
She also said “evidence is mounting” that indicates Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Iran has said that it stepped up its uranium enrichment program to produce fuel for a medical research reactor.
Clinton said the Obama Administration was not planning a military offensive against Iran.
The Saints pulled out a solid victory over the Colts, winning 37 – 31 in Miami.
Matt Kadel gives a nice post-game analysis on his new blog.
Here are my top 10 favorite commercials of the night, in no particular order.
Almost a week after Fox News was criticized for censoring the end of Obama’s confrontation with the GOP House, MSNBC cut away from Obama’s Q&A with House Democrats when he urged representatives to “get out of the echo chamber” and stop watching mainstream media.
“Do you know what I think would make a difference? If everybody here turned off your CNN, your FOX, your — just turn off the TV… MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics,” Obama said. “Because [Americans] don’t care, frankly, about majorities and minorities and process and this and that. They just want to know: are you delivering for me? And we’ve got to get out of the echo chamber. That was a mistake that I think I made last year was just not getting out of here enough. And it’s helpful when you do…”
He then cut to a panel of political strategists yelling at one another.
If irony came in a keg, we’d all be wasted.
Rupert Murdoch – the man behind Fox News and The Wall Street Journal – plans to block Google from displaying News Corp.’s content.
“What’s the point of having someone come occasionally who likes the headline they see in Google? Sure we can go out and say, ‘Hey we got so many millions of visitors…’ The fact is, there’s not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the websites profitable. We’d rather have fewer people coming to our website, but paying,” Murdoch told Sky News.
“The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them. That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”
“Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search,” she said. “But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.”
“Colbert Nation” became the new official sponsor of the 2010 U.S. Winter Olympic Speedskating team Monday night after Stephen Colbert signed up his viewers to provide the team’s primary funding.
The team lost its largest cash provider in October when its No. 1 sponsor, DBS Bank NV, declared bankruptcy. “Colbert Nation” will replace the old DBS logo on the team’s new uniforms.
U.S. Speedskating Executive Director Bob Crowley told the Associated Press that it was “definitely an unconventional arrangement,” but he said he thought it would generate exposure for the sport.
“We’re highly optimistic that the country is going to get behind this and get behind the Colbert Nation and support this amazing team,” Crowley told the AP before appearing on The Colbert Report to present the contract. “I don’t have any idea if it’s going to make $5 or $500,000. I couldn’t tell you.”
Colbert is no stranger to raising serious cash. He already raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Yellow Ribbon fund for wounded veterans. He once sold a cast off his wrist to someone on Ebay to raise $17,200 for the fund. Colbert told his audience to donate money at ColberNation.com and USSpeedskating.com.
The U.S. Speedskating team will compete this weekend in the first qualifying round of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The team has won 75 medals for the U.S. – 35 of them gold. Colbert told the Associated Press that he was considering taking his show to Vancouver when the team competes in the Olympics.
A new bill would give tax breaks to struggling news organizations if they restructure into non-profit organizations, but critics worry it could threaten “Freedom of the Press.”
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., introduced the “Newspaper Revitalization Act of 2009,” on Sept. 17, and conducted a Joint Economic Committee hearing yesterday to “examine the treacherous economic landscape newspapers face.”
“This hearing comes on the heels of my submission of H.R. 3602, a bill which will enable local newspapers to take advantage of non-profit status as a way to preserve their place in communities nationwide,” she wrote in The Hill’s Congress Blog. “I think that the government can help foster solutions for this industry in ways which protect the independence of newspapers and enables their objective reporting to thrive in a new economic and media climate.”
What is the Newspaper Revitalization Act?
The bill gives struggling newspapers tax breaks if they restructure as non-profit 501© (3) organizations.
To qualify for 501© (3) status, an organization must:
Concerns
Critics worry the bill could threaten the news industry’s First Amendment Right to Freedom of the Press by prohibiting news organizations from expressing political opinions or commentary.
The Daily Times editorial section warned that, under the IRC, “newspapers whose coverage annoyed one political party or the other might find themselves threatened with government action and their tax-exempt status put in jeopardy.”
Support
Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., who introduced a similar bill in March, said the non-profit status would be “similar to public broadcasting” – like PBS and NPR.
“Newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns,” Cardin said. “Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible.”
In an interview with the editors of the Pittsburg Post-Gazette and the ToledoBlade, President Obama said he would be “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as non-profit businesses.
“I haven’t seen any detailed proposals yet but I’d be happy to look at them,” he said.
According to the Columbia Journalism Review, newspaper ad revenues have fallen to 1965 levels.
Andy Greenhaw specializes in multimedia journalism, social media marketing and motion graphic video production. He's proficient in Adobe After Effects, Premiere, Final Cut Express, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Soundbooth, Camtasia, Web design and copy writing for SEO.
I can produce almost every form of content on a highly professional level, and I know how to viralize it through social media.
