Sir Tim Berners-Lee, one of the original architects of the Internet, has given an interview to BBC News on the eve of the 15th anniversary of Web code being put in the public domain --- the effective start date of the mad rush that has spawned some 165 million sites and billions of user experiences.
In it he's philosophical about what is actually still a young technology. More good than bad, lots of new networks, plenty of problems solved.
But his expectations are about as grand as anything one might contemplate: data in everyone's hands, the opportunity to govern the planet within its grasp.

Journalism comes in all shapes and sizes today. At the beginning of the decade, few could imagine the podcast, and yet all sorts of conventional media (like us) produce them (here are some from our staff at The Vancouver Sun, including one from our gardening writer, Steve Whysall).
Which is a roundabout way of discussing the cataclysmic change in music sales. Where a decade ago we were riveted by the massive change in music marketing through superstore chains like HMV, Virgin and the fledgling Wal-Mart initiatives, these days the most booming music retailer is Apple and its iTunes application.
A new report suggests 40 per cent of all music sales will be digital by 2012. Wired.com, extrapolating that data to reflect current market conditions, surmises that iTunes will corral fully one-quarter of the sales pie.
No one has surfaced to challenge Apple's dominance. But then again, a few years is a long time in any industry.

One development, one decision, one statement today on the state of the American newspaper.
The Audit Bureau of Circulation released data on U.S. dailies that shows a decline of 3.6 per cent in the six months ending March over a year earlier. Some of the dailies fared well --- Wall Street Journal and USA Today registered gains --- while some metropolitan papers (Dallas Morning News, for instance) had some palpable declines.
The Capital Times, the Madison (Wisconsin) daily, has shuttered its print edition and is simply going digital going forward. It had been placing increased emphasis on its online edition for some time, and now is making the move.
And Advertising Age has opted to cull the downers into one regular feature it will call The Newspaper Death Watch. The first instalment ran this week.

The newspaper industry is attempting to demonstrate its capability to participate in the digital age. The latest indication is the latest Newspaper Association of America report, which suggests newspaper advertising actually drove online sales. In particular, the study conducted by Google through Clark, Martire and Bartolomeo found consumers used newspaper ads as an early part of the purchase chain. The ad led to the URL, which led to more research, which led to the purchase.
The study supports longstanding research in the confidence consumers hold in newspaper advertising. What the NAA concludes is that print and online advertising are part of an ecosystem, and that shrewd advertisers using all platforms are bound to have the greatest success.

News that the Gannett and Meredith organizations have conscripted a social-networking technology firm to generate new digital enterprises.
In the case of Gannett, it'll create an independent music site to promote local artists in an effort to connect them to radio play. The fever of social networking will presumably be the catalyst to get them on the air.
And in the case of Meredith, it wants to launch what it says is the first user-generated recipe-exchange site.
Both have enlisted Ripple6, which has built a thriving new social network for the Guiding Light television program for Procter & Gamble.

We are far enough along into Web 2.0 that it ought to be adopting some of the familiar traits of conventional media --- as in circulation figures, readership figures, single-copy figures, overnight ratings, and the like. Ought to, as in starting to, not should be.
Sites themselves are judged by their unique visitors, by the number of pages those visitors view, and by the time they spend there. And it's relatively easy to translate that data into a popularity rating for particular online creators (such ratings are far less precise for either print or broadcast media).
Recently a Gawker site memo surfaced that indicated it gave bonuses depending on page views. Even though the site acknowledged that such measurement is crude and often distorted, it paid more or less to writers whose works were better or lesser read. Essentially, for every 400,000 views, you got $2,000 --- or $5 per 1,000 views, more likely.
PBS' Mark Glaser recently chimed in with an interview with CBSSports.com and how it values loyalty more than anything else. It's at work with Omniture, the company with the powerful Site Catalyst software, to find out how many unique visitors look at individual writers' work. Glaser also suggests organizations should want to gauge interaction with the audience, how much news is broken,
This debate is at an early stage, but somehow in the new environment of fledgling digital business models, something empirical is likely to replace the more subjective determinant of what someone's work is worth.

The New York Times is the standard-bearer in print and digital publishing, so its decision to experiment with so-called "welcome" ads --- messages that can't be avoided as the site is launched --- is a significant gesture with implications for media.
Until now the Times only placed such uninterruptable ads later in the experience. But earlier this week it placed an ad ahead of the home page (AdWeek's story on it here), before any of its journalistic content could be viewed, and users could only exit the ad after a few seconds. It's essentially a print version of the pre-roll sites often offer for video, but it's a major departure for a site that has prided itself on putting journalism ahead of advertising.
The Times has seen its digital revenue growth slow this year, and its clients have for some time been seeking greater advertising presence. The venerable Times has the clout to resist such entreaties and the clout to capitalize when it opens the door.
Research indicates that in the digital space people are more likely to be irritated by anything intruding into the consumption of its journalism, so this move is not without its risks.
The Times promises to monitor user behaviour carefully, and while it is saying that we can expect some of these ads each week, it is making no commitments to permanence.

Steve Outing has for years been sounding a reasonable, practical tone in striving for strong journalism in realistic economic conditions in his writing for Editor & Publisher. It should come as no surprise that, in weighing in on the direction of newsrooms, Outing is recognizing the days of mini-vans arriving with new personnel seem done for the time being. But he sees a viable, positive option in developing a professional-amateur model of journalism, tapping into expertise and enthusiasm in communities of interest to complement the work of the full-time professionals.
Outing notes that the first wave of so-called citizen journalism might have foundered, but he notes that version 2.0 can enlist vigorous, intense expertise in markets for niche sites to add to the work of newsroom journalists.
A number of newsrooms have done this with blogs, but Outing is suggesting something more active and involved. In the same way journalism has used freelancers to fill roles to serve audiences, this appears to be an obvious route to better results.

An interesting post today from Online Spin on the dynamic qualities in the next iteration of the World Wide Web, what it calls the World Live Web.
Rather than worry about traffic, it fixates on qualified traffic. Rather than fixate on presentation, it rivets on engagement. Rather than riveting on targeting, it worries about relevance.
The WLW stems from a belief in mass syndication of content, of how fresh is good, of how archiving can be excessive, of how spiders crawl too widely. It's after what matters, and in this approach it is coming to grips with the let's-find-everything model that overwhelms too many users.
It's more than a little intriguing as a possibility of content creation and management. And it feels like the near-future.