The concept of using technology to refer to another creation --- on the Internet, through linking to another page --- is part of a significant skirmish between the world's largest press baron and a Web aggregator in the United Kingdom.

While it may be definitive, this battle between News Corp. and NewsNow may portend the battleground: Is it a right to link out, or does one need approval?

Blogger, author, academic and journalist Jeff Jarvis has been a longtime proponent of what he calls the link economy. He sees it as essential to journalism's success --- you scratch my back, I scratch yours, in essence --- and believes the business model of the future will owe much to using this link economy.

But Rupert Murdoch's team has another idea. It won't let NewsNow link to its content, feeling that the aggregator's repurposing of it denies News Corp. of revenue it should have to itself.

In his latest column for rhe Guardian, Jarvis is rather pointed: "I fear that what is really in danger here is the doctrine of openness on which ­journalism and an informed society depend."

He asserts that if a link is public for one, it should be public for all.

What do you think?

A particularly hard-hit sector of newspapers has been the loss of real estate advertising, a reflection of overall economic conditions that dampened development and sales of projects in a low-demand period. As brokers faltered, so did their spending.

But Borrell Associates suggests some restoration of revenue is under way in the nearly-$20-billion sector and will continue this year. Overall i expects a three-per-cent increase following a 20-per-cent decline last year --- hardly a renewal, but the end of a freefall.

As for newspapers, they'll experience growth of 16 per cent after a decline of 34 per cent in 2009.

By 2013 people will gain access to the Internet more through their mobile devices than through their desktop computers. That's the view of the Gartner research firm.

There will be 1.82 billion mobile devices and 1.78 billion computers by then.

Soon after more than three billion people will be capable of conducting electronic transactions.

The next phase will also involve contextual information.

"Context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social interactions. Furthermore, whereas search was based on a 'pull' of information from the Web, context-enriched services will, in many cases, prepopulate or push information to users," the report notes.

A nice, common sense post from Meryl Evans on WebWorkerDaily identifies the rules of thumb for social media. In essence, there really aren't any.

Having said that, Evans approaches social media smartly and has some discipline about even the free forms of it. Among her rules:

1. Do it the same time daily.
2. Spread the Tweets.
3. Join the right Twitter chats.
4. Review Facebook daily.
5. Update Linkedin at least a few times weekly.
6. Write at least two blog entries weekly.
7. Read others' blogs.

In his latest post on Online Journalism Review, Robert Niles argues that journalists and executives shouldn't continue to fritter away their time looking for a new revenue model for their business.

It isn't happening. Neither subscriptions nor advertising nor donations will be enough to sustain the existing production model of journalism.

Instead, he suggests focusing on that production model and revising it to stay within the new boundary created by unlimited competition and minuscule barriers of entry of the Internet.

He suggests the industry stop looking to conventional media for the answers and focus on the nascent efforts online beginning to bear fruit as the inspiration.

In his second instalment on the future of newspapers, Reflection of a Newsosaur writer Alan Mutter makes clear that everything depends on the viability of advertising.

If it recovers and grows, fine.

If it levels off, fine for awhile longer.

If it continues to deteriorate, not fine anymore.

The simplification of Mutter's analysis here doesn't do justice to the work he's done in reviewing the data and projecting numbers. Principally he's of the view that manufacturing and distribution costs are the anchor keeping the boat from sailing.

"I don't know what the new innovations might be," he writes. "The scary part is that I am afraid the publishers don't, either."

His latest post for his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog is the first of a two-part series on the future of the newspaper. In it, Alan Mutter examines the consumer demand for the print publication.

He crunches numbers conservatively and concludes that the demand will decline, but not precipitously. By 2025, there will be a drop of 27 per cent and by 2040 a nearly 50-per-cent decline.

That still leaves newspapers in a reasonable condition as a consumer good. What isn't clear is whether advertising will depart in a disproportionate way and migrate to the related digital platform of a newsroom in a helpful way.

Another big issue: "The question for publishers is how long their audience will be large enough to justify the enormous expense of owning and operating the massive and inefficient infrastructure they use to manufacture and distribute newspapers."

The next instalment will deal with that issue.

The conventional wisdom about the Internet is that collaboration, openness and intellectual property freedom lead to a greater good.

But one of the pioneers of the digital experience --- the inventor of the term "virtual reality" and one of the digital industry's earliest supporters --- believes that the concept of crowd wisdom is dead, replaced by mob meanness.

The New York Times profiles Jaron Lanier, who argues that the anonymity and piracy of the Web have generated a technological tyranny, defeating good ideas and perpetuating mediocre ones. He is a supporter turned dissident decrying what he calls a destructive new social contract.

“The basic idea of this contract is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.” 

He proposes a rethink of systems and ideology and the introduction of a compulsory micropayment system. 

Liz Gannes of GigaOm talks to Google engineering director David Glazer to gain some insight into the company's plans to embrace social media this year, and she comes away with a few clues.

For starters, Google already knows much about you --- who and where you are, who are your connections and what are your core interests, even though it's not always apparent how we're disclosing them.

Now it will start attaching that information to tools that will try to prove relevance. In particular it will be working with Google Social Search for greater comprehension of networking and Latitude features for stronger understanding of where your friends are on that network.

Google also plans greater collaboration with interoperable networks and devices. It ought to be an interesting push beyond Nexus One.

A new report (chronicled in Alan Mutter's Reflections of a Newsosaur blog) suggests a minuscule take-up rate of subscribers at news sites with paywalls: 2.4 per cent, in fact, far less than the expected rate advocates believe will emerge.

The study from ITZ/Belzen assessed the success of news sites in attracting paying subscribers when they erect paywalls. In some cases the take-up rate is approaching double digits, and without real regard to what fees are associated with the offering, but mainly it's clear that people won't easily pay for content they feel is freely available.

Last week, the new Journalism Online initiative indicated that its arrangement with publishers will see them create a metered system of several articles before people pay for full access. Even so it's expecting subscription rates of approaching 10 per cent.