Sorrell: bounce back sooner than you think

Writing in The Times today Sir Martin Sorrell makes his case for the economic bounce back coming sooner than other think (2009 he says) although the piece could have benefited from last minute editing regards India.

The WPP chief executive plumps for 2009 as opposed to others saying 2010 or even 2011. He says sooner because "the market is missing the extent of the fiscal stimulus that the Obama administration is expected to announce. It will be colossal – the number $500bn has started to appear in the past few days – although, for it to work, people must act together and not independently".

Looking at the emerging four Bric economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – he says India will do best next year.

The piece was clearly written before the Mumbai terror attacks and it is difficult to tell what impact they will have on business and investment the in Indian economy as people get nervous.

The case for these Bric economies, however, is undoubtedly strong as an indebted Europe, UK and US falters leaving the way open for the four to emerge.

WPP has long invested in the emerging markets and pegged future growth prospects to them.

In the article he compares Western Europe to "an ageing company with huge healthcare and pension liabilities that are difficult to fund" and because of this he says for WPP "there is no point in continuing to invest in Western Europe unless structural changes are made".

"For example, if we win a piece of business, we have to bear the severance costs of the company that lost the contract."


His gloomy view of the UK and Europe chimes with comments he made last week when he said there would be job cuts in its more mature markets in 2009 coupled with investment in emerging countries.

Sorrell said then that WPP would invest in emerging countries such as India, China or Brazil next year, in which WPP is strong and that promise growth, while cutting elsewhere.

"We will have to invest in those markets and take out head count in more mature markets. The key thing for us is to balance revenue and cost growth in terms of headcount."

In The Times today he also says that the ailing West needs Turkey inside the EU. He says entry should be a no brainer.

"It is the gateway to the Middle East, has a young population, is highly entrepreneurial and would be a huge boost to the EU's 450 million people."

As always, Sorrell has faith in America and recalls that while people wrote off the US in the 1980s and said that Japan would take over along came Ronald Reagan and shook it all up.

"He changed the dynamics. What the world really needs right now is leadership in the Reaganite, Thatcherite, Blairite mould to lead us out of this crisis."

He also wonders like everyone else if Obama could be the man to lead the change.

"Mr Obama could be that person. I look at Barack Obama and it takes me back to when I was 18, to when John F. Kennedy was elected. Mr Obama is young, smart, a wonderful orator and represents a new hope, a new era. JFK was just the same and he changed the attitudes of my generation. That’s what the world needs now from Mr Obama."

Twitter at the centre of UGC in Mumbai attacks

Twitter has been highly prevalent in the citizen journalism reports about what has been going on in the terror chaos in Mumbai with reports saying at one time the Indian government wanted people to stop Twittering.

Indian blogger Gauravonomics is saying that Twitter has been one of the best sources for real-time citizen journalism news on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Various sources were also reporting that at the height of the terror attacks the Indian government asked for all live Twitter updates from the scene to cease immediately. It was concerned that terrorists were using the updates to keep abreast of the news. Scary thought that terrorists are also early adopters.

A tweet was sent and reposted across Twitter saying: "ALL LIVE UPDATES - PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations".

Seems fair enough although you might have wanted to stop broadcast media pointing their cameras and updating their websites. If terrorists were monitoring Twitter, they were no doubt looking at news sites to get intelligence on Indian military movements.

The Indian blogosphre has also been highly active and Flickr has too has seen a lot of activity as citizen journalists snapped shots and posted them online.

The Guardian was also reporting on the use of Google Maps page and Wikipedia page and how quickly they were set up.


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The end of print for The Independent?

It happened recently in the US, but could it happen here? Roy Greenslade writes today about his kill or cure plan for the Independent -- kill off the print version and carry on as a digital paper.

As the Independent prepares for a round of 90 editorial job cuts he argues in his Evening Standard column today that Independent News & Media must bite the bullet and stop spending a small fortune every year (around £12m) publishing the Independent as a newspaper.

He suggests the radical plan for the paper's survival in the week that Roger Alton, editor of The Independent, said he feels a "terrible personal failure" for the newspaper's struggling performance but has ruled out a sale in the immediate future.

The personal failure is not his alone. Well before he arrived after his high achieving stint at the Observer the Independent was listing like a ship in a breakers yard. Sales of the paper fell 16.29% year on year in October to an average circulation of just 201,019 copies.

The paper has been in decline for some time and increasing the cover price to £1 in this market seems like madness. It certainly struck Alton as such. He saw fit to attack it in a Sky News interview earlier this week.

What lies ahead, says Greenslade, is a "real chance to lead the digital revolution towards its next, inevitable phase", which is slowly winding its way towards us and claiming victims as it goes.

Just look at the Christian Science Monitor in the US as an example. That venerable paper, that once sold as much as the Independent, is preparing to cease publication and go online only (with a weekly magazine in support).

And look to Rupert Murdoch's recent comments on The Future of Newspapers where he said "that newspapers will reach new heights in the 21st century" but that these would be digital ones.

He said the real business of newspaper owners "isn't printing on dead trees" and that newspapers themselves are not the medium, but rather the qualities that good newspaper businesses embody -- great journalism and judgment.

Back to the Independent, Greenslade makes a solid argument and it is one that everyone knows well by now. Closing a failing paper (or a magazine for that matter) will "save trees, save ink, production and distribution costs. There is marketing as well, of course, and in doing it, as Greenslade says, "the paper will take a giant step into the digital age".

It is that first step that is the hardest as it will be Sir Tony O'Reilly admitting defeat. He clearly holds the paper quite dear. It has been said before that it is his calling card. British national newspapers are a generally impressive affair and much admired. He would lose that, but he too must face up to reality. To the new reality even.

As part of that new reality is the esteem in which some news and blog sites are now held in. Look at the recent US Presidential. It was in a large part a digital election and proved a bonanza for respected political websites such as The Huffington Post, Slate and The Page.

So yes there is much merit in what he suggests. The only fly in the digital ointment is the same fly that exits in the printed world. The Independent is bottom of the pile and that is even more true in the digitally world.

In the recent electronic ABCs The Independent.co.uk reported a rise in unique users, climbing 5% to 8.4m. The Guardian, market leader here, increased its users by 7.4% month on month to a record of almost 26m.

The Guardian soars online, but revenues are still elusive and becoming more so in times like these. What would that mean for an electronic only Independent? One imagines that the digital product would have less staff than the paper one (although this assumption may be incorrect). It would still struggle in the face of its rivals far behind the Guardian and fourth placed Times Online for that matter that recorded 20.5m uniques.

We also have no clear idea what would happen to the Independent's site online should it lose its number one promotional tool -- the newspaper itself.

What impact would the loss of the paper product have on those 8.5m uniques? Big question and no answer close to hand. IN&M have apparently looked at this scenario and ruled it out because of the huge loss of ad revenues and estimated the gap between print revenue and online-only revenue would be as large as £30m a year after all the cost savings.

But as the paper continues to lose ad revenue offline and readers the gap is not going to stay that way. There will be additional online revenues as well to squeeze that gap closer.

It would be a leap in the dark, but my feeling as well is that sooner rather than later we will know the answer to that question as some takes a leap into the unknown. Will the Independent last another year? It has to be worth a bet.

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02 and Sky suck in call centre hell

The other week I went to call centre hell. In a weird fluke, a telecoms and broadband nexus, I was given reason to contact BT, Sky and 02 all in one week. Seriously it was too much for one person to take.

Here's what happened. First my landline phone stopped working (I didn't actually notice, someone had to tell me on my mobile) and my broadband was cutting out. So I call BT. It's not their problem it was Sky's.

I call Sky and turns out my broadband router was suddenly killing the phone and killing itself while it all killed me. This takes several calls to fix and I have no broadband for a week after it gives up the ghost completely.

As a fix I figure I can use my Blackberry, but despite following the on screen instructions I can not get it to work as modem. I am really good at doing stuff like this. I'd not a major geek, but a minor one. Clearly my skills are limited. So I call 02 and that was really so incredibly painful that I don't think I could ever risk calling them again for tech support. It is a pointless exercise.

As 02 was the worse offender by a country mile and then some. I got nowhere and ended up on hold for an hour.

The only plus side was that the call was free from my mobile, but the pain of the music (some version of 'When Johnny Comes marching home') and the constant voice telling me this over and over again was almost unbearable:

"I'm sorry all our agents are still busy. Please hold the line and your call will be answered as soon as possible. Your call is important to us, but we are currently experiencing a high number of customer enquiries. You may find it easier to call back later. Our hours are 8am to 8pm. If you wish to continue to whole please continue to do so."

I get it you really don't have to keep reminding me once every single fraking minute. I can only think that these constant reminders that they are busy (liked I hadn't already noticed) are only there to drive you off the line as really they don't want to help you.

Well it was unbearable as finally after an hour on hold (with phone on speaker phone) I gave up and have not gone back.

Next worst offender was Sky. Time spent here totalled one hour and twenty two minutes most of which was on hold. My problem was solved (I needed a new router), but it was painful getting it and I had not broadband for a week.

Finally BT which came out on top as with them I only ended up on hold for a matter of minutes before being offered a ring back, which I took and 15 minutes later I was called back and my problem solved well sort of.

The BT service is so simple and painless that it does leave you feeling much better about the company.

Sky on the other hand not only wasted almost one and a half hours of my time it also charged me £5 for the privilege with its 0870 customer help number. That's pricey help and once my contract is up with them I'm just going to move back to Virgin Media. Calls to Virgin Media at least are free and now it has its Virgin + box Sky doesn't seem any better as an option.

As bad as the money is Sky's terrible elevator muszack. Like some kind of electro jazz that's piped straight from hell, I'm guess on that but it was driving me slowly insane.

Do people in customer service not think about what they are inflicting on their customers? I can only think not. All managers at these call centres and in customer care should be forced to go through the experience. That way I am pretty sure we would see some changes and sharp'ish.

Facebook says no to Twitter

Facebook has walked out on talks to buy Twitter saying $500m was too much. Some will say that maybe it is for a service that makes no money - but I'm still convinced it has much potential.

It's a little amusing for Facebook – over valued at some ludicrous $15bn – to walk away over issues of price. It would have bought Twitter in stock and its stock is just not worth what it once was. It was the failure to agree how much its stock is worth now, in this new economic reality, that killed the deal. As the New York Times says the values of many net firms are more akin to a lottery than anything else with investors and buyers betting on the future.

The same, of course, happened to Facebook when two years ago when Yahoo! walked out on a deal to buy it over issues of price. Mark Zuckerberg must be counting his lucky stars that Yahoo! did that otherwise he would be lumped in with the whole train wreck that is Yahoo!.

At the time Yahoo! didn’t think Facebook was worth more than $1bn. This was of course before Facebook went stellar. Hindsight is a wonderful gift and so clearly we can see that was a mistake. The deal could have transformed Yahoo! and its fortunes. Too late for that one, that ship has clearly sailed.

I'm pretty sure the same is true of Facebook's failure to bag Twitter. Okay it isn't a transformational deal, but I do think it shows a failure of ambition on Facebook's part, which seems stuck in some kind of comfort zone. It is tweaking with things when maybe it should be...oh I don't know Twittering?

Twitter's management in talks first reported by AllThingsD blog clearly wanted more and believed that the micro blogging service was more than the 3.33% of Facebook stock that was on offer. Facebook has to realise it is no longer worth $15bn (based on Microsoft's $240m investment).

Is Facebook right to walk away from takeover talks with Twitter?

In recent weeks I have heard more and more cool uses of Twitter, particularly on the customer service front, for Twitter like 02 and Comcast using it really well. But these are more like personal experiments feeling the way forward than anything else. That said, I think that process is only going to accelerate…of course it might also come apart at the seams and next year we will be left going Twitter? Oh yeah I used to use that.

I'm sure it is more likely to be the former rather than the latter. It almost feels like in the case of Twitter something that is ready to be plugged in to something else. I don't know what. If I did I would be on it. It could have been Facebook, but as that door closes it opens for someone else. Any bets?

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Iran arrests blogfather for spying

The Guardian and The Times are reporting today on the arrest of Iranian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, who has been accused of spying for Israel.

Derakhshan has the enviable nickname the "blogfather" for his efforts in kick starting the Iranian blogging revolution - so far the only casualties of which have been the bloggers themselves.

He was arrested after returning to Tehran a few weeks ago having lived in the UK and Canada. He had been publicly critical of Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling him a "hardline reactionary".

Derakhshan had previously visited Israel as he wanted to show Iranian readers what "Israel really looked like and how people live there". He said he also wanted to "humanise" Iranians for Israelis.  His reward for that slice of humanity was a visit from the Revolutionary Guards.

According to the Iranian website Jahan News, which is said to be linked to linked to the Iranian intelligence services, Derakhshan "confessed" during interrogation to being involved in espionage. Jahan News  also said he had been described in Jewish newspaper articles as a "friend of Israel".

The Guardian quoted him as saying:  "Iran doesn't recognise Israel, has no diplomatic relations with it … Too bad, but I don't care. Fortunately, I am a citizen of Canada and I have the right to visit any country I like. I'm going to Israel as a citizen journalist and a peace activist."

His blog has been blocked by Iranian government since 2004 and he founded Stop censoring us blog to watch the situation of internet censorship in Iran. The last post to his English language blog was on October 6.

That post marked one of a few that had seen him start to distance himself from Israel and praise Ahmadinejad.

 

"Ahmadinejad's brilliant strategy of dismissing Israel and smiling to the U.S. has divided the the U.S. in all levels and that's a big achievement comparing to Khatami's weak and failed U.S. strategy that led to Iran being part of the 'axis of evil'. Now the same Bush administration has officially opened the diplomatic line. Please get over Ahmadinejad's scruffy look, prayers, and plain language and see these achievements."

He had also defended Iran's right to nuclear weapons for defensive purposes, and said he would return to defend Iran if America ever attacked. "I can’t let myself to sit down for a moment and watch make a Baghdad out of Tehran".

The concillatory tone could be seen as an volte face or alternatively it could be seen as the reality of living and blogging back in Iran, which ever it was it did not affect the attitude of the regime.

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Ziff Davis closes PCMag and goes online only

PaidContent is reporting that Ziff Davis is the latest in a line of publishers to close a magazine, in this case PCMag, and go online only. It's an accelerating trend.

The site says that Ziff Davis, which recently came out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, will focus on growing PCMag's online network of sites, which is led by PCmag.com and also includes ExtremeTech, Gearlog, Appscout, Smart Device Central, Cranky Geeks, and PCMagCast.

PCMag will not be the last with a number of publishers considering similar moves. It's a bold move, but a sad one in that it ends a 26 year run for the magazine as a printed title. PCMag launched in the early 80s during the dawn of the PC.

It isn't just magazines, of course, it is newspapers as well with Christian Science Monitor closing down and going online only.

Like the CSM, which at one time sold 200,000 copies, PCMag at one stage was publishing 400 pages an issue and going as high as the 600-page marks.

Some might say it has gone from that to nothing, but the other way to look at it is that it is publishing many hundreds more web pages each week with acres of content and community.

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BNP membership list and Google mash-ups

The BNP membership list story is all over the national press today, but online there is another spin to the story as one blogger has taken the list and made a Google Maps mashup of the data.

The list was published after it was leaked on various websites and can now found on several including Bittorrent and Wkileaks and is the talk of the blogosphere as well as Twitter where there has also talk of creating a possible mashup using the membership data and postcodes before someone went off and did it.

The map created by Ben Charlton, owner of the site Spod.cx, shows with lovely red pins that BNP membership spreads pretty evenly across the UK.

Personally, I haven't checked it. According to a post on his site Charlton says that after finding a copy and checking it "for the obvious odd family members or people you know and think might be members, I thought it'd be cool to make a Google Maps mashup of the data".

He extracted the postcodes from the member list and converted them into latitude and longitude co-ordinates and plotted them on the map. Although he makes clear that he's not revealing any of the actual list data and if people want that they have to get it themselves. Likewise.

There is no doubt going to be loads more of this as this story runs and runs. It is already on dangerous ground not dissimilar to the Baby P case. In that instance people started Facebook groups targeting the family members of Baby P and defaced the Bebo page of the mother. This could easily happen again as people attack the members of this vile organisation online.

As others have already said this data should be taken down before this gets out of hand, which it quickly will powered by mob rule – never the greatest provider of fuel. The BNP should be debated and beaten at the ballot box.

There's an update on this the guy has now taken  the map down. Seems like the right move, I know I linked to the post originally, which seemed fair enough as that was where the post originated allowing other people to take a look and make up their own minds.

Update

I have decided to take down the map. Many people have commented that the map does give a false impression of accuracy, despite my making this clear, and I'm tempted to agree. I do not want to single anybody out and by removing the accuracy from the map it is possible that it ends up incorrectly implying a property contains a BNP member. It has been suggested that an inaccurate map that doesn't make that clear is worse than publishing the list itself, and I think that's a reasonable comment. 

 

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Positive story about the future of newspapers

Rupert Murdoch has been putting the doomsayers of the newspaper industry in their place. The future he says is still bright, but it is in case you were in any doubt by now definitely online.

In a speech he has knocked the doomsayers who are predicting the internet will kill off newspapers. He calls them "misguided cynics". The title of the speech ("The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees") told you all you needed to know about his thinking (and those of his advisers) about the future of newspapers. He was reminding newspaper journalists almost that they often think too literally about where they are published and that simply because they're no longer "in print (on the printed page)" this does not signal the end - far from it this is only the beginning. 

"Too many journalists seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise," Murdoch said, "Unlike the doom and gloomers, I believe that newspapers will reach new heights in the 21st century. Readers want what they've always wanted: a source they can trust. That has always been the role of great newspapers in the past. And that role will make newspapers great in the future."

Murdoch has always bet on newspapers, but he has also bet big online and that's what he is still doing so in this speech, which says there are opportunities online as web traffic rises and circulations continue a steady fall as the slow shift of power from the the printed page to online continues. His words also underscored the areas that digital publishers need to focus on if they want to get it right and realise these opportunities.

The march in that direction is irrefutable and quiet unstoppable. That's the obvious bit. Just look at the Christian Science Monitor as an example of this (although really, I sincerely believe that if they had changed the name of that paper a few years ago it would not be ceasing publication) as it goes online only (with a weekly magazine in support).

The challenge/opportunity that Murdoch talks about is how newspapers crack the conundrum of making cash out of their ever mightier online operations as more and more people choose this way to consume the 21st versions of newspapers.

He said the real business of newspaper owners "isn't printing on dead trees". Newspapers themselves are not the medium, but rather the qualities that good newspaper businesses embody: giving readers great journalism and great judgment – words they trust, which is why we all turn to our favoured media brands online when we want the answer to some question of the day. That's clearly where the future growth lies in the most trusted news, best communities, bloggers and other content.

"If papers provide readers with news they can trust, we'll see gains in circulation — on our web pages, through our RSS feeds, in emails delivering customised news and advertising, to mobile phones. In this coming century, the form of delivery may change, but the potential audience for our content will multiply many times over.

"The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around," he said. "It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world."

The point about the qualities of newspaper businesses and how those qualities can be applied to where ever newspaper words appear is really the heart of the debate about the future of newspapers beyond those trees.

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"The layoff will be blogged" – blogging the downturn

Good piece in the New York Times today on how "the layoff will be blogged". It picks up on how this downturn is more public than any before it with bloggers covering not only each other's but their own departures as well.

Oddly, and dispiritingly, some people are even reading about their own layoffs on blogs. The paper reports on Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., who said (get this) "he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company — even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs".

The Gawker Media Valleywag blog gets a mention (you know the one that said blogging is dead. Lol), which is publishing a lot of the job losses in Silicon Valley where the geekstream is broadcasting departures as they happen via blogs, sites like Techcrunch  and Twitter feeds.

The papers says that the tendency to blog layoffs is one that is going to spread to companies of all sizes and in all industries. It quotes Rusty (love the name) Rueff, a former human resources executive at Electronic Arts and PepsiCo, saying "whatever you say inside of a company will end up on a blog. That is kind of scary, not to mention a little dangerous for those still in employment  (so I can't tell you about the secret memo I just got, sorry). So you have a choice as a company — you can either be proactive and take the offensive and say, 'Here’s what's going on', or you can let someone else write the story for you".

One company more than most has learnt this the hard way – USA Today-owner Gannett. When it told staff it was laying off 10% one journalists, Jim Hopkins, set up an unofficial Gannett Blog, which has since been writing daily about the rise and fall of Gannett since August.

Gannett doesn't have a company blog. No shocker there as many companies do not. Who gives them advice? Oh right PR firms many of whom still don’t get it. Yet.

It also mentions Steven Carpenter, chief executive of a two-year-old investing advice site, Cake Financial, who blogged the night before he laid off 30% of staff and directly after he met them.

"It let them know what we were up to in real time, so they didn’t get nervous about what was going on," he said.

Okay so some of this is new, but some people sure have short memories. Having sat through the dotcom boom and bust does no one remember Fucked Company? Fucked Company reported many thousand job lost in the last Dotcom boom bust circa 2001. Although, Fucked Company, as its homepage tells you, has long been frakked itself like many of the sites and companies it reported on.

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It was the blogs that called Obama victory

An historic election and a welcome historic victory for Barack Obama that was called online by some of the big political blogs and news sites before the US TV networks, which having been burned by exit polls in 2000 and 2004 took the cautious route.

There's already been an avalanche written about how this election was one like no others in terms of its online impact through digital media – it being dubbed the social media election by some. The much written about uses of services like Twitter, YouTube, blogs all played a role so it is satisfying to see websites come out on top as the victory was called.

"Obama Wins the Presidency" Slate reported at 9:27 p.m a solid 90 minutes before the first of the networks called it. Right after Slate came The Page with "The Networks Won't Tell You, but The Page Will: Barack Obama Will Be the 44th President of the United States".

On its homepage Slate, said: "In proud Slate tradition, we bring you the exit polls bouncing around that they won't talk about on TV."

Although there was a hedging proviso: "They are not the real thing, nor are they guaranteed to bear any semblance to the real thing".

It then showed all the data showing Obama ahead in Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

While the web called it at 9:30, the TV networks did not call it for another one and a half hours at 11pm after the polls had closed in the West and Barack Obama had the 270 electoral college votes he needed.

Charles Gibson on ABC News told everyone how it was going to be fore the networks early on when he said "We are not going to project a winner in this election until one candidate has reached the 270 number."

You can understand why. Remember 2000? The networks called Florida for the Democrats and Al – loser – Gore before 8 pm based on exit polls and we all know how that turned. Ouch.

Same again in 2004 as John Kerry (who?) was shown to have a commanding lead over George W Bush. Exit for the exit polls. This time it was definitely going to be different.

The networks loss was the web's gain. The Huffington Post as well called it early and in the process the sties racked up hundreds and hundreds of comments as people debate and engaged. In the UK, Harry's Place where I blog racked up more than 500 comments as people debated throughout the night.

Despite all their supper splashy graphics the US networks held back and were restrained not following the lead of the web rivals, which must have been galling for many network TV journalists and presenters.

As the New York Times put it they held back "saying that exit surveys and actual vote counts did not permit them to proclaim a victor".

"The headline is, well, there's still no call in a number of key battleground states," Katie Couric said on CBS News at 8 p.m., before ticking off a list that included Florida and Virginia.

An hour and a half later as CBS and others gave McCain the must win state of Ohio to Obama Couric's on screen partner Bob Schieffer said, "I don't see how John McCain can win now. I think Barack Obama is going to be the president of the United States. That's just the shortest way I can put it."

Couric replied "The cake is baked, in your view?"

"Yeah."

Even with that, with the cake being baked CBS and its television rivals waited another one and a half hours, and did not officially call the race until 11 pm when polls closed in California and Obama's electoral college tally passed 270.

It's maybe then that you need a network to sum it up as Brian Williams on NBC drew the parallels with the Kennedy generation:

"There will be young children in the White House for the first time since the Kennedy generation. An African-American has broken the barrier as old as the Republic."

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Follow the election on Twitter

There are so many ways to follow the US election tonight, but one proving really popular is Twitter.

Twittervotereport.com gives constant updates from across the US while the polls are open including the current length of queues, which has been one eye opening features of this very exciting US election where Barack Obama looks set to make history.
 
In Herndon, Virginia, for instance there is currently a wait time to vote of 150 minutes and a similar one in North Charleston, South Carolina.

As Digital Blogger has posted and many others have written this has been a huge digital election and social media has been a big part of that. It looks like it might well be the tipping point for Twitter as it crosses from the geekstream to the mainstream.
 
There are only a few obstacles in its path...oh wait one of those is how do you turn a profit with the is micro blogging service? Answers on a digital postcard.
 

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How to lose readers and alienate people

Vanity Fair has shrunk Kate Winslet. She looks like an animatronic doll/actress.

The star posed for the "explicit" photoshoot in stockings and stilettos, but it doesn't look in the slightest like her. She's promoting her new film 'Revolutionary Road' (based on the Richard Yates book). It sort of reminds me of Daryl Hannah as Pris in 'Blade Runner'.
 

The picture appears to have been wholesale butchered. You have to ask what's the point? I mean she has no lines, wrinkles, bags or smile lines and hardly any detail on her face at all.

They appeared to have made her a size eight, pinching her waist. Vanity Fair said she "hardly needed any retouching". Judge for yourself.

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