:
CABLE CUT SMACKS
CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTERS -

Two damaged undersea cables -

*The biggest impact to the rest of the world could come from the outages in India - where many US and European companies outsource back-office operations including customer service call centres.

"The companies that serve the US East coast and the UK are worst affected. The delay is very bad in some cases," Rajesh Chharia said.*

:: [Metro UK] ...and... [indiaenews]

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BOOKS & BLOGS (3#) -

Reading, Writing and Rambling -

# Sarah Boxer tours an armful of books about Blogs and gives a picaresque introduction to Blog Culture. Her book on the topic is Ultimate Blogs which is an anthology to be published this month.

"Writing like this might seem easy, but just try it... many journalists who get called upon by their editors to keep blogs are similarly stumped... They read like journalists, not bloggers."

# Thomas Jones scrutinizes Sarah Boxer through
his pair of opera glasses, then shares his views:

"Books and blogs, if they’re doing their jobs properly,
are as different as two kinds of published text can be."

# The new Feb/March '08 issue of
BookForum has been posted online.

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BLOGLINES CAUGHT
IN MOGULS' CONFLICT (2#) -

# "The struggle between media moguls John Malone and Barry Diller over IAC/InterActive Corp. took a significant turn Monday, when Malone's Liberty Media Corp. took steps to wrest the Internet company from Diller's control."

# "Liberty sued... accusing IAC of attempting to wrest control of the new companies and dilute Liberty's current 62 percent voting power."

[CNN MONEY] ...and... [BLOOMBERG]

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The Press: A MOVABLE FEAST (4#) -

Fleet Street to Wapping to
Broxbourne . . . and then Miami -

Stephen Brook describes the migration of one of England's biggest newspapers; there have been many changes along the way.

So, too, American newspapers must change with the times in order to stay contemporary - McClatchy's Miami Herald and the Tribune's SF Sun-Sentinel included. Expect changes ahead...

Knowledgeable insiders expect the price of newspaper pulp to rise sharply. This development would suggest a period of compression and consolidation. But will we recognize the product after all the expected changes or will tomorrow's newspaper be something we cannot now even imagine?

Rubberneckers: The UK Guardian's Ed Pilkington in Miami watching the political scene among the area's Cuban-American voters. Florida libre.

Dave Barry's Inside Guide to the Florida primary;
tongue-in-cheek at The Seattle Times.

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:
Bookish: SOME WEEKEND LIT NOTES (4#) -

# A book of short stories by James Lee Burke,
John Harvey's Nottingham cop returns, and
more Crime reviewed by Peter Guttridge.

# John Naughton says computers and
the internet are affecting how we read.

# A collection of Walter Benjamin
fragments reviewed by Peter Conrad.

# Sarah Birke describes some of the newer
"small" Literary Magazines based in the UK.

...

:
PERUGIA DESANGUINATION update -

Raffaele Sollecito's computer has yielded a diary or blog on which he allegedly expressed his admiration for a notorious killer, according to a report by Kate Mansey.

It may have been posted in cyberspace or on the internet, but the reporter says that his lawyers "took the site down after his arrest."

Detectives are currently in the process of mining his hard drive for clues after he gave them his password last Monday to access its contents.

:: UK Sunday Mirror ::

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Bookish: UNDER A
CABIN FEVER MOON (5#) -

A supposedly sluggish Publishing Industry is impatiently waiting for Dan Brown's next novel, which is "purported to be about freemasonry and the Founding Fathers," reports Jeffrey A Trachtenberg at the WSJ.

+ They're already getting a big hunk of a new Stephen King novel for January, but they've still got ants in their pants!

# The Mighty Wurlitzer by Hugh Wilford is ostensibly about those front groups that were engaged in the cultural aspects of the Cold War, including the Encounter "scandal." But toward the end, there may be vague hints of Black Helicopters looming just over the horizon. Reviewed by Gabriel Schoenfeld at the WSJ.

# Otto Penzler says he liked
Craig Holden's new mystery novel
Matala which he briefly reviews here.

# Random House's paperback imprint
Arrow is reissuing 42 PG Wodehouse
comic novels in new covers starting in May.

# Alan Taylor interviews
literary critic James Wood.

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:
SoFlo: SURFIN' AROUND (4#) -

# Palm Beach: "Keller shot his fifth ex-wife - Keil's sister - Rosemarie Keller, in the neck in November 2003, 11 days after a divorce decree had given her half of his many millions of dollars in assets. He shot Keil twice in the same incident, before Keil managed to wrest the gun from him." [pbp]

* * * * *
# Morning Brew - Sonja reports a new trend
in Rio: stealing hair that can be made into wigs.

* * * * *
# Creative Loafing has reincarnated their Sarasota Blog, now known as The 941, with some new bloggers who seem to be infusing it with some new energy.

* * * * *
# A new Cuban-American blog
by Maria Estorino has more of a cultural focus.

...

:
DESANGUINATION DEATH
IN PERUGIA update -

A witness has come forward to say that he observed Amanda Knox with Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede on the evening of Oct 31st. Moreover, he asserts, that Knox threatened him with a knife.

:: The Daily Mail ::

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:
BUMMED OUT IN BALTIMORE -

Where the News ain't what it used to be -

On Sunday, David Simon wrote a piece at the Washington Post called:"Does the News Matter To Anyone Anymore?" In it he describes the decline of many American newspapers and his feelings about it.

Now, Jack Shafer at Slate writes a response.

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Press and Media:
MUTATING NEWSPAPERS (2#) -

# "Editors are losing custody
of their papers." --Ken Doctor

+ Ken, they haven't had custody since they got rid of paper boys and turned their newspapers into unwieldy little wagons loaded with junk mail. That horse left the barn
long ago.

* * * * * * * * * *
# What is Crosscut?

"Based in Seattle, Crosscut is a guide to local and Northwest news, a place to report and discuss local news, and a platform for new tools to convey local news. The journalism of regular citizens appears alongside that of professionals."

...

:
Bookish: LIT CHATTER (2#) -

# Who should be the next Miss Marple?

Whether we like it or not, there's a TV production company in the UK which fully intends to thrust another portrayal on us... and, in all likelihood, she'll eventually drift over here to this side of The Pond on PBS.

"Twee & Twinkle" will not be received with enthusiasm by readers at The UK Guardian, or so they resolutely claim.

# And now for something completely different: A notable, though brief, exploration of new edge speculative fiction as a form of social analysis. Take a glance for as-yet undiscovered works.

...

:
DAVOS '08 (3#) -

# Prez Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan opened the World Economic Forum with a speech warning that "the whole world could suffer from the 'wildfire' of terrorism engulfing his region." [AP]

# More details at ::Reuters::

# Jeff Jarvis is at Davos and ::Blogging::

...

:
Bookish:
A HAUNTED KEY and more (2#) -

Stephen King's latest novel take place
in Florida - doesn't everything these days?

Duma Key, supposedly one of the Florida Keys, is where his protagonist goes to recuperate from an accident. The island has some sort of Southern Gothic magical ambiance. The book (almost 600pp) doesn't start featuring eery devices until its final section, and then, whammo! - "a ghost ship, zombies in chains, an evil spirit and a wilderness where weird, lethal creatures lurk or hover." Even though this book is being released mid-winter, it looks like it could turn out to be a popular Beach Read over the following summer.

Duma Key by Stephen King
:: Reviewed by John Dugdale, Times ::

* * * * * * * * * *
:: An extract from JG Ballard's soon-to-be-published memoirs in which he describes some of his life in Shanghai as a young boy.

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OUT THERE . . . SOMEWHERE (3#) -

# General Dell Daily from Tampa, who is now the counterterrorism head at the State Dept, says he is uncomfortable with the paucity of information that sometimes comes out of Pakistan's NWFP. +Well, it's a tough area for reporters to cover; they do the best they can. [Lardner AP]

# Pakistan's popular Geo TV News went back on air yesterday, but had to sign a government code of conduct. [Brummitt AP]

# Backgrounder on The Bin Laden Boyz - get out your opera program and take notes... if you're at all interested. [MSNBC]

...

:
IN THE WAR AGAINST
CYBER TERRORISM -

The UK Government has embarked on a new initiative to counteract cyber terrorism. Al-Qaeda has "regrouped" largely through internet use, this article contends, and there are estimates of about 5,000 websites involved.

:: By Ash Smyth - TFP ::

...

:
QUERYING MUSTAFAH HEADROOM -

So far, no answers . . .

But what did you expect from a CGI Avatar?

Al Qaeda's media production company, A'Sahab, announced in December that they would entertain questions which they would then answer "as soon as possible."

AP reporter Lee Keath has been keeping track of the questions submitted before the cutoff deadline on Jan 16th and gives us some idea of what was submitted.

:: An interesting and worthwhile read.

...

:
Hot Spot:
GAZA CITY BLACKOUT (3#) -

Very dramatic photos have emerged from Gaza City which show residents there by candlelight. They claim they are being deprived of their electric lights by Israel.

But the electrical workers union and their shop steward at the power station in Ashkelon tell a different story:

:: "We're supplying electricity while under fire."

*Despite the blackout in Gaza City, southern and central Gaza - which receive electricity from Israel and Egypt directly - were not affected by the shutdown.*

*Gaza blackout blamed on Israel*

...

:
AMW: THE FORT MYERS EIGHT -

I don't usually watch America's Most Wanted, but I happened to catch it last night when John Walsh presented this case, featuring a creepy visit to the location where the skeletal remains were found, the lead forensic pathologist, a forensic dentist, and some remodeling of the victims.

"Months after detectives recovered a cache of bones from eight men in a wooded area of Fort Myers, Fla., authorities have officially ruled the case a homicide. Cops continue to try to find out who the men are, and whether a serial killer is behind the gruesome mystery."

If you've been following this case, but missed the program, you might want to check out the material Walsh left online about it.

...

:
SoFlo: WHERE WE LIVE -

# Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, appeared noontime at a book-signing event for her new opus, Memo To the President Elect, in the Plantation branch of Barnes & Noble at the Broward Mall and seems to have attracted quite a large crowd.

# Hats, Hoods, Masks & Shades:

Citing Florida's recent plague of bank robberies, which increased 40 percent in 2007, the Florida Bankers Association has proposed new rules that will prohibit hats, hoods, sunglasses or anything that might obscure a person's identity in Florida banks. [sent]

+ What ever happened to the "Klan Mask Laws," and why don't they already cover this issue? Just asking . . . But don't expect any intelligent discussion of this issue any time soon . . . until maybe CGI Mustafah Headroom complains. Shazzam the Goat Boy is probably cooking up the video right now while you are reading this ;-)

+ typo corrected: 1/20 at 11:12am.

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