Through The Picket Fence -

Chicago-based Tribune Co's proposed spinoff of its newspapers will probably happen by midyear, according to a recent Bloomberg news report. Tribune is the parent company of the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel newspaper.

Meanwhile, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department is going to use Nextdoor Dot Com to alert residents about crimes in their neighborhoods. The website is free to use, but may feel intrusive to personal privacy for those who are sensitive to such issues.

The San Francisco-based company which designed the templates and code for this operation has already established pages for 69 different neighborhoods within the city’s boundaries, which should cover about three-quarters of the local population.

And in other
local Communication News . . . 

For the third time in two days, burglars have used a car to smash through the front entrance of a South Florida cell phone store.

Although fewer than 3 in 5 adults in the U.S. currently own smartphones, the popularity of these gadgets has increased among the illiterate population with their ability to respond to spoken directions or to translate oral dictation into text.

"Unfortunately, it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person."
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