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My "Read It Later" list

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The World's Best Ever: Design, Fashion, Art, Music, Photography, Lifestyle, Entertainment. Secrete base 2012. The Polarization of Extremes - The Chronicle Review. Exclusive Area 51 Pictures: Secret Plane Crash Revealed. Suspended upside down, a titanium A-12 spy-plane prototype is prepped for radar testing at Area 51 in the late 1950s. After a rash of declassifications, details of Cold War workings at the Nevada base, which to this day does not officially exist, are coming to light—including never before released images of an A-12 crash and its cover-up. (Also see "Revealed: How Area 51 Hid Secret Craft. ") Area 51 was created so that U.S. Cold Warriors with the highest security clearances could pursue cutting-edge aeronautical projects away from prying eyes. During the 1950s and '60s Area 51’s top-secret OXCART program developed the A-12 as the successor to the U-2 spy plane.

Nearly undetectable to radar, the A-12 could fly at 2,200 miles an hour (3,540 kilometers an hour)—fast enough to cross the continental U.S. in 70 minutes. From 90,000 feet (27,400 meters), the plane's cameras could capture foot-long (0.3-meter-long) objects on the ground below. —Brian Handwerk. 5 Ways to Monetize the Future of News Media. This series is supported by The Poynter Institute’s Mobile Media blog – your guide to the intersection of mobile and media. Sign up to receive the blog in newsletter format and be entered into a drawing to win an iPad at Poynter.org/ipadgiveaway. News media — including newspapers, news weeklies and TV news programs — was struggling long before the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. It was a struggle, however, that many investors in 2006 and 2007 perceived as merely a temporary setback — a setback they attempted to capitalize on by snatching up seemingly undervalued media companies.

In 2006, newspaper publisher McClatchy acquired what was then the second largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., Knight Ridder, for $4.5 billion in cash and also financed $2 billion of the company's debt. The recession has forced news organizations to face what they have long suspected: Their business models are broken. The numbers are ugly. 1. 2. The WSJ's current model is not perfect, however. A Saucerful of Secrets. Google & the Future of Books by Robert Darnton. How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright.

For the last four years, Google has been digitizing millions of books, including many covered by copyright, from the collections of major research libraries, and making the texts searchable online. The authors and publishers objected that digitizing constituted a violation of their copyrights. After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future.

No one knows, because the settlement is so complex that it is difficult to perceive the legal and economic contours in the new lay of the land. The word also spread by written letters, for the eighteenth century was a great era of epistolary exchange. But will it?