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February 11, 2006 | Greg Ness: Web Takes Employment Lead

According to a study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton, 51 percent of all new hires in the U.S. were sourced via the Internet. The study also showed that the majority of employers felt the Web contributed to an increase in quality of new hires in 2005 over previous years. Outside of jobs produced through the Internet, employee referrals were responsible for 19 percent, employment search firms for 10 percent and newspapers for 5 percent. The most employer satisfaction with new hire sources was from employee referrals followed closely by jobs filled through a company’s own Web site.

The study was sponsored by the DirectEmployers Association, a non-profit organization comprised of over 200 large U.S. employers.

February 03, 2006 | Cloy Tobola: Politicians Attempt to Spin Wikipedia Listings

The Internet should present a variety of opinions… unless those opinions make you look bad or your opponents look good.

That’s been the approach of some in Congress who have recently been caught editing Wikipedia listings with a heavy hand.

Last week, the Lowell (Mass.) Sun reported that Rep. Marty Meehan’s (D-Mass.) staff admitted altering his listing to remove unflattering information, including a broken term-limit promise and his accumulation of $4.8 million in campaign funding, a figure far beyond that of any other House member.

February 01, 2006 | Cloy Tobola: Yahoo Takes Heat for Human Rights Violations

While many would argue that opening up business relationships in China has lead to greater freedoms, it’s also put businesses in a position to impact human rights issues.

As noted in an earlier blog, a few U.S. companies have been criticized for helping totalitarian governments censor the information and sites that users can access. Now, Yahoo has come under fire from Amnesty International for identifying a Chinese journalist who had disclosed a Communist Party directive instructing the media to downplay the June 4 anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre.

January 31, 2006 | Phil Leitch: Buy a Senator an iPod

With the ‘broadcast flag’ and ‘audio flag’ rearing their ugly heads again comes the news that 82-year old Senator Stevens (Alaska) - chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation - asked if the legislation would stifle his abliity to put songs from the radio on the iPod his daughter had recently given him. A site has been created to help buy more Senators iPods. It seems that these once before clueless lawmakers have an iPod to use, they see how inherently wrong the broadcast flag and any similar pending legislation is.

Along with buying the Senators iPods, they should throw in some Tivos too.

January 25, 2006 | Cloy Tobola: Governmental Censorship Derails Internet Promise

The borderless Internet may have been the goal, but government interference into the free flow of information has put serious restrictions on the liberating effect that might have had on culture and society. The Open Net Initiative, sponsored by the University of Toronto, Harvard and Cambridge Universities, is focusing its research on what individual governments are doing to control information flow, and the impact this has had on politics, human rights, state sovereignty and law.

January 23, 2006 | Cloy Tobola: Selling Our Souls for Security Checks

The Transportation Safety Administration has followed the Bush Administration’s directive by offering private companies the option of creating “express lanes” for travelers who want to avoid delays at airport security checkpoints

The agency, which has recently been criticized for a variety of blunders including stopping a 4-year-old boy whose name was similar to one on a terrorism watch list, will require that program applicants undergo a government background check and submit 10 fingerprints that will be stored on a digital identification card.

January 19, 2006 | Cloy Tobola: Another Stab at Electronic Books

In light of Sony’s poorly managed rootkit fiasco, the introduction of the Reader for electronic books offers the company an opportunity to redeem itself, and put some exciting new technology in the hands of consumers. (The Reader is an updated version of the Librie, which was released last year in Japan. The product received bad press because of its high cost and its digital rights management software that automatically deleted purchased ebooks after 60 days.)

January 16, 2006 | Cloy Tobola: Copyright Battles Heat Up Abroad

Copyright law is a dinosaur; or maybe, calling it a BetaMax would be more appropriate. Like the ill-fated video tape format,  intellectual property law had its place in history, but it simply doesn’t work with current technology anymore. Recent battles over implementation of copyright laws in France and Canada illustrate the need to rethink issues of content ownership.