www.josschuurmans.com

Police find killer dead after shooting spree in Finland, taking six lives

(Information based on Finnish media reports - see sources below)

Six people lost their lives today in a shooting spree in the Finnish city of Espoo, near the capital Helsinki.

Three men and a woman were shot dead in the Prisma super market store at the Sello shopping center, around 10 am Finnish time (= 8 am UTC). All four were employees at the store.

A fifth victim, the ex-spouse of the killer, was found dead in her home in Espoo. She was an employee of the Prisma store, too.

In a live broadcast press conference which started at 14:30 Finnish time (12:30 UTC), police revealed that the shooter, Ibrahim Shkupolli, born in 1966, had killed himself in his own home in Espoo. Shkupolli is a native Kosovo Albanian.

The shooter assassinated his victims with a 9 mm hand gun. A restraining order was in force against Shkupolli, to prevent him from approaching the Prisma store as well as the home of his ex-spouse.

He also had previous convictions, in 2003 and 2007, for illegal possession of fire arms and ammunition.

The exact motive of the killings is still under investigation.

Finland has a history of public massacres in recent years. Eleven people, including the shooter Matti Juhani Saari, died in a massacre at a vocational school in Kauhajoki, September 2008. Nine people, including the shooter Pekka-Erik Auvinen, died in a shooting incident on Wednesday at Jokela High School, in Tuusula, November 2007.

The following are my tweets, based on Finnish media reports. I'll copy-paste them here in chronological order:

Tweet: [Reading:] Sello Espoossa: Ainakin neljää ihmistä ammuttu - Suomi - Uutiset - Ilta-Sanomat http://ping.fm/vHvR8

Tweet: http://www.yle.fi Four people killed in Finnish shopping mail shooting #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: Three men and a woman were killed in a shopping mall shooting in Finland this morning. #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: Police know the identity of the shooter, male, born 1966. Motive as yet unknown. #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: Shoot-out happened at Sello Prisma mall, city of Espoo near capital Helsinki #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: Police were alarmed 10:08 am. Still looking for killer, who used a 9 mm hand gun. #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/ET2pf Suspect, Ibrahim Shkupolli, is known to the police. Updated 11:30 UTC. #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Blog post: 'Another shoot-out in Finland: four people killed in shopping mall' #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Not 4, but 5 killed in Finnish shopping mall shooting; killer at large #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg 5th victim found dead in a private home in Espoo #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Killer still at large, "armed and dangerous" (Police) #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Shooting spree in Finland; five dead, killer at large #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Police: possibly 6 dead (not 5), possibly including the killer. #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Police have surrounded home of suspected killer #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Killer convicted for illegal arms posession 2003, 2007; restraining order #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Police have found the suspect killer, Ibrahim Shkupolli, dead #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Police find killer dead after shooting spree in Finland, taking six lives #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet: http://ping.fm/zHaYg Gunman in Finnish massacre Ibrahim Shkupolli was Kosovo Albanian #Finland #news #shooting

Tweet:

Sources:

Neljä kuoli ammuskelussa Espoon Sellossa - tekijä on edelleen kateissa | YLE (national public broadcaster)

Tässä on poliisin etsimä ampuja | MTV3.fi (national commercial TV channel)

Police press conference broadcast via YLE Areena

...

Would we still call it journalism?

Tweet (by me): [Reading:] The End Of Hand Crafted Content http://ping.fm/kzv9s

Tweet (by Katri Lietsala): @josschuurmans What did you think about Arrington's article? In my opinion, he is so right: excellent journalists can have their own brand.

We're talking about Michael Arrington's article on TechCrunch, 'The End Of Hand Crafted Content', which by now has received 350 comments and, according to Topsy.com, was retweeted 1246 times.

Tweet: @katrilietsala http://ping.fm/lxNzC I agree that excellent journalists can have their own brand. There are several push factors at play.

For one, "disintermediation" and "sources going direct" imply that one no longer needs to be part of a news organization - the news industry - to conduct and share acts of journalism. We really are witnessing a revolution, with the means of production changing hands.

For another, the social web, particularly the blogosphere and the real-time web, appear to appreciate personal perspectives just as much as "objective reporting". This seems like an opportunity for individuals, including the "excellent journalists" that you mention, to build their personal brands.

Furthermore, I expect that journalists will be increasingly compelled to go solo if their news organizations keep hanging on to their model of "lecturing" rather than facilitating conversation.

Some freelancers have always been successful at franchising their personal brand across various channels and publications.

The Demonic Verses

Having said all that, the other interesting point that Mike Arrington made has to do with the advent of highly automated, "fast food" content production.

The illustrating example here is Demand Media, a company whose way of producing “content” was characterized by Jay Rosen as "demonic".

Demand Media immediately brought to my mind the animated video "EPIC 2015" (the Evolving Personal Information Construct), in which GoogleZon operates in a rather similar fashion and the New York Times finally goes off-line to continue as an elite newspaper for the rich and the elderly.

Yet, personally, I am not so afraid of this type of spam. As Doc Searls wrote:

"(...) Just as an aside, I’ve been hand-crafting (actually just typing) my “content” for about twenty years now, and I haven’t been destroyed by a damn thing. I kinda don’t think FFC is going to shut down serious writers (no matter where and how they write) any more than McDonald’s killed the market for serious chefs. (...)"

The web has always challenged us to distill signal from noise. The vast majority of content on Twitter, for example, is of no consequence to most of us.

If anything, should spammy businesses like Demand Media succeed in gaming the major search engines (which I doubt), it would only boost our reliance on social filters: if I know you and you have read something that you'd like to share (and possibly discuss) with me, I'd probably be interested and trust that it's not spam. We are already relying more and more on human filters this way.

The business model is still up in the air

The big question remains, how is "excellent journalism" going to be paid for in the future? Jeff Jarvis is exploring possible answers within the 'New Business Models for News' program at the City University of New York's CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Nikki Usher contends that the business model for news has always been broken - which, in my view, seems to imply that news provision may have to be subsidized. Looking at it that way, Arrington may be right in suggesting that for some, the only way to keep publishing may be pro bono.

Perhaps if we made a distinction between b2b and b2c journalism?

The revenue model for b2c journalism relies on sales and advertising. Selling journalistic content to consumers seems an increasingly difficult proposition. And on the flip side, Dave Winer sheds some doubt on the future of advertising as well, in Rebooting the News #35:

"(...) advertising itself may go away. “In a way an ad is a query… They try to guess as to what I’m interested in. And the better they guess, the more it becomes information." (...)"

The revenue model for b2b journalism is a content model. Businesses will always be willing to pay for timely and/or exclusive information as long as it's an essential part of their supply chain. The potential customer segment here is not limited to the media.

But what then, if the customer is not a media organisation? Let's say it's a mobile phone producer, or an insurance company instead. If journalists were to supply them with information which has been researched and packaged exactly as if it were supplied to the media, would we still call it journalism?

Capturables from Rebooting the News #10

Just arrived to the office. Lots of stuff I feel like unloading.

On my way here I listened to episode 10 of Rebooting the News. I think it was one of the best shows in the series so far (among the first 10, that is - I have some catching up to do).

Jay Rosen makes two very pertinent connections between the tech world and journalism. The first connection is about bug catching, a very common and appreciated practice in software development, but very under-utilized and unappreciated in journalism.

In software development, everyone acknowledges that you cannot ship a perfect product. There will always be bugs and users are actually thanked for pointing them out. In journalism however, the expectation is that journalist check and double-check before they publish, and then ship a "perfect" product. If a reader points out a mistake or contradiction, typically the journalist either doesn't respond at all, or responds in a defensive fashion. Jay explains it as tribalism.

Blogging seems to allow for a less defensive attitude. Blog posts are perceived as less finished or less perfect, and bloggers seem more willing to correct and update their copy, while acknowledging readers' feedback.

It's an interesting phenomenon to point out and certainly something that needs to be addressed in the "new news system".

The second connection Jay makes is about usability. Why are geeks not better at making things easy to use? Dave Winer says it's because it's so damn hard to do. And it requires a great sense of empathy - the ability to put oneself in the users' shoes. He mentions Martin Scorsese and Marlon Brando.

Jay sees a nice parallel in that journalism is about making it easy for users to user their own democracy, lowering barriers to participate without much prior knowledge. (This is so true and elegant!)

What else? The Church of the Savvy. That's Jay's description of the undeclared religion of the press. Above anything else, journalists will value, remain loyal to and defend their savvy-ness.

Jay's inspiration of the week is Elvis Costello's recording of Nick Lowe's classic, 'What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding'.

Note-to-self: action points:

1. Check out Jay's tumblr blog - I didn't know he had one, and I was wondering why Google Reader hasn't served me any blog content from Jay lately (I've subscribed to PressThink);
2. Check out blogtalkradio, which is what Dave is using for these podcasts. I need to figure out a way to produce podcasts easily and economically.

[REPEAT from June 1: Dave built a dedicated site for 'Rebooting the News', at http://rebootnews.com/. He also created an RSS feed of this podcast series, at http://rebootnews.com/rss.xml. And a package of the first ten episodes which he uploaded as a torrent to Mininova at http://www.mininova.org/tor/2637891. He announced all of this here: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/05/30/rebootingTheNews110.html]

And don't miss the FriendFeed room either!

Reading and sharing; the mobile saga continues

[NEXT DAY:  I need to improve the shared reading feed!]

In my continued struggle to set up a system which would allow me to bookmark, save, tag, annotate, aggregate, integrate and/or share anything I read online (on machines with various degrees of mobility), I am now using Google Reader as my main reading tool.

(I have been complaining before about the lack of social awareness of the mobile environment)

What I read and what I can do with it next is important to me. I like Google Reader's "Note in Reader" browser plug-in, for it allows me to "keep" content on the web which I browse but haven't (yet) subscribed to.

Problem is, when browsing Google Reader on my S60 mobile phone I can only "star" or "share" the items in the feeds I have already subscribed to. Even the outbound links in those Google Reader feeds I cannot mark.

The best workaround I know for this is to bookmark links outside of Google Reader within the Opera Mini browser, then synchronize those bookmarks with Opera Link, view them in a browser on a PC or Mac sometime later at home or at the office, and add them to Google Reader manually, using the "Note in Reader" plug-in.

That's not a very smooth workaround! Please, tell me you know a better way!

While most of the above concerns the capturing of my reading, I would also very much like to share my reading (and annotations), e.g. on my blog, in the most integrated fashion. That means, I would like that reading to be published on my blog, just like any other blog posts.

I am already using a few services which call Typepad's API to post stuff, notably Delicious' daily links and Ping.fm. I wish I could have Google Reader automagically post my shared reading straight onto my blog (not as a sidebar).

Now I just looked at notify.me's relatively new Ping.fm feature. So I added my Google Reader's shared reading feed as a source to notify.me, then selected Ping.fm as a destination for this feed.

I set up Ping.fm to post stuff to my various accounts on social media and social networking sites, including my blog at www.josschuurmans.com.

Curious to see what will happen with this scenario:

Opera Mini -> bookmark -> synchronize -> Opera Link -> "Note in Reader" -> Google Reader shared reading -> notify.me -> Ping.fm -> www.josschuurmans.com / Twitter / Facebook / etc.

Never mind the 140 chars limitations. Or actually: mind!

[In the meantime:] WOW! I just had a look and something did happen while I was writing this post. Interesting; to be continued..

P.S.: In an attempt to edit RSS feeds before subscribing to them in Google Reader, I was using Yahoo! Pipes earlier today. My goal was to follow (only) Marshall Kirkpatrick's produce on ReadWriteWeb, so I fetched the RSS feed from RWW into Yahoo! Pipes, then filtered its contents by author, to output a modified RSS feed.

Here is the pipe:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/josschuurmans/rww_marshall_kirkpatrick

and this is the feed: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=3MwoDOBS3hGSVPSx8cv2rw&_render=rss

I was able to add this new feed to my "myYahoo!" page but, to my surprise, I couldn't get Google Reader to subscribe to it. So, what's that about?

P.P.S: Do I hear you saying that all this can be fixed with an iPhone or a Nokia N97? How?

"Rebooting the news" | Dave Winer's and Jay Rosen's podcasts

[UPDATE, June 1, 2009: Okay, Dave built a dedicated site for 'Rebooting the News', at http://rebootnews.com/. He also created an RSS feed of this podcast series, at http://rebootnews.com/rss.xml. And a package of the first ten episodes which he uploaded as a torrent to Mininova at http://www.mininova.org/tor/2637891. He announced all of this here: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/05/30/rebootingTheNews110.html. So, I think my work is done. :-) ]

I'm sure Dave Winer would suggest a better way of doing this, but I'm not a geek and still wanted to collect all of Dave's and Jay Rosen's podcasts on "rebooting the news" in one view. Subscribing to the RSS feed of Scripting News (http://scripting.com/rss.xml) helps but shows all of Dave's other posts as well.

See also: Rebooting The News - A FriendFeed room to discuss the weekly Jay/Dave podcast about news and tech (http://friendfeed.com/clique-with-claque).

So here comes:

Rebooting the News #10 (May 24, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/05/24/rebootingTheNews10.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot09May24.mp3
"(...) We got this one folks! (...) Topics include: Maureen Dowd of course, the Church of the Savvy, One year of Twitter for Jay. Why is user interface so damned hard? 10 years since Edit This Page. And an inspired choice for Inspiration of the week, Elvis Costello's recording of Nick Lowe's classic What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding.
One of the best Reboots yet, imho.
PS: As usual subscribe in your podcatcher or iTunes. (...)"

Rebooting the News #9.5 (May 19, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/05/19/rebootingTheNews95.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot09may19.mp3
"(...) A 15-minute test-cast that turned into a mini-episode.
Jay asked me to explain why it was so important that the NYT has a River of News.
We're now using the full-blown BlogtalkRadio system, this was just a test to make sure we knew what we were doing after Sunday's disaster.
However the feed stays the same, you can follow us in your podcatcher or iTunes. (...)"

Placeholder podcast (May 17, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/05/17/placeholderPodcast.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/cn09May17.mp3
"(...) I screwed up and lost this week's Rebooting The News podcast.
This brief three-minute solo cast explains what happened and expresses apologies to Jay and everyone for this screwup.
Sorry!! (...)"

Rebooting the News #9 (May 10, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/05/10/rebootingTheNews9.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot09May10.mp3
"(...) Jay and Dave talk about paying for the news, Ted Nelson as inspiration, "Giant Pool of Money." (...)"

Rebooting the News #8 (May 3, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/05/03/rebootingTheNews8.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot09May03.mp3
"(...) Topics: Jay opted out of Twitter's Suggested Users List, he explains why and we discuss. His choice for Inspiration of the Week is Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. (...)"

Rebooting the News #7 (April 26, 200)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/04/26/rebootingTheNews7.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot09Apr26.mp3
"(...) This week's 40-plus minute podcast with Jay Rosen and myself. (...)"

Rebooting the News podcast for April 19 (April 19, 200)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/04/19/rebootingTheNewsPodcastFor.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot09Apr19.mp3
"(...) A bit of housekeeping -- the podcast now has a name -- Rebooting the News. Perfect name, cause it's got the technical side with rebooting, and boot is the first part of bootstrapping. And News is what it's all about. (...)"

This week's podcast with Jay Rosen (April 12, 200)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/04/12/thisWeeksPodcastWithJayRos.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09Apr12.mp3
"(...) I spent 40 minutes this evening talking with Jay about news, tech and the future of journalism. As always it was a great learning experience with the NYU journalism professor. (...) At the end of the show I promised to create a room on FriendFeed to post links to stories we'll discuss on future shows. (...)"

Jay and Dave ride again! (March 29, 200)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/03/29/jayAndDaveRideAgain.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/clickClack09Mar29.mp3
"(...) Four weeks in a row, the clicking and clacking blogging brothers talk about the reboot of journalism, the news of the week, and a new $1.75 million fund for investigative journalism that Jay is advising. (...)"

Click and Clack the Blog Brothers (March 22, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/03/22/clickAndClackTheBlogBrothe.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/clickClack09Mar22.mp3
"(...) Really enjoying this. Today it was more laughs and less serious. (...)"

Can Twitter save the news? (March 15, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/03/15/canTwitterSaveTheNews.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09march15.mp3
"(...) Jay Rosen, this week the question of Twitter as an environment for journalism came up. If the outlets of MSM are in trouble and if Twitter is rising, can it fill some of the role vacated by MSM? (...)"

Interview with Jay Rosen (March 8, 2009)
Blog post: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/03/08/interviewWithJayRosen.html
Podcast: http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/rosen09Mar08.mp3
"(...) It's a good idea to check in with Jay on where journalism is at every once in a while, which is what I did this morning. I'm going to try to do these more regularly with people who are on the Friends Of Dave channel, like Jay. We start off talking about curmudgeons, then on to rebooting journalism, Meet The Press, the broken government, and everything related. Jay is really smart, spends a lot of time thinking about things I really care about. I thought the interview came out great. Hope you all listen. 40 minutes. (...) Jay is a professor of journalism at NYU and was my choice as Blogger of the Year for 2008. (...)"

Dugg: PressThink: Filter the Best Stuff to the Front Page: A Demo | Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen wrote on June 16, 2008:

"(...) OffTheBus and NewsTrust.Net ran a little test two weeks ago. It's a crowdsourced week in review feature for high quality John McCain coverage, June 2 to 9. Here's the background and results. (...)"

What I find more interesting about this blog post than the content of the experiment or indeed the ensuing US-centric political flame war in the comments is the concept of the experiment, as well as Jay's reference to Dave Winer's rivers of news, and the concern that filtering may not keep pace.

(...) The mission of NewsTrust—it’s nonprofit and non-partisan—is to be a “guide to good journalism.” The site offers a “range of tools to help you find and share” the best work.

(...) Sites like NewsTrust take it for granted that expansion in media space is a good thing. But filtering and forwarding systems must keep pace.

(...) In this connection, I point you to NewsJunk.Com, a new site. Dave Winer, with some co-conspirators, created a river of news intended for serious users of political coverage. It’s designed to be radically inclusive and selective. (And fast.)

(...) Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices Online—a “find new voices” project that’s working—said he was concerned that tools to organize the flow and make it practical for people to use were not keeping pace with expanded opportunities to publish.

(...) For a more intelligent and flexible filter we can trust in pro editors to adapt to the Web. We can turn to bloggers (they edit the Web for us and always have.) Or we can try the participation route, also called social media. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Video-interview of Rupert Murdoch | Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher / D6

"(...) video highlights from the first part of the D6 interview of Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO, News Corporation, conducted by conference co-hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. (...)"



(part 1 - 07:00 minutes)

Asked by Mossberg if newspapers have much of a future left, Murdoch says:

"(...) Over the last 10 or 15 years they've made every economy possible in production, with computers and so on, but not in journalism. Now they have to turn to journalism.

(...) Every story in the (...) [Wall Street] Journal currently is, on average, touched or edited by eight different people. That is ridiculous. (...)"

(part 2 - 6:15 minutes)

read more | digg story

Dugg: Dan Gillmor: Principles of a New Media Literacy | Publius Project

[UPDATE, April 30, 2009: Dan Gillmor's essay on the Publius website appears to have moved. The new, correct link is: http://publius.cc/principles_new_media_literacy]

"(...) In this emergent global conversation, which has created a tsunami of information, what can we trust?

How we govern ourselves on the Web depends in significant ways on the answers. To get this right, we’ll have to re-think, or at least re-apply, some older cultural norms in distinctly modern ways.

It comes down, in significant ways, to some principles, both for media consumers and creators. They add up to a 21st Century notion of what we once called “media literacy.” But media literacy has generally lacked the kind of participatory piece that is so essentially a part of digital media. (...)

• Be skeptical of absolutely everything.
• But don’t be equally skeptical of everything.
• Understand and learn media techniques.
• Ask more questions.

(...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Reuters' "mojo" experiments with Nokia | Jemima Kiss

"(...) Reuters' journalists are experimenting with the potential of mobile journalism through a project with Nokia's research centre. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Blogging as a Form of Journalism | J.D. Lasica / OJR

"(...) Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices (...)"

When cleaning up my paper (sic!) archive the other day, I came across a printed article in two parts, by J.D. Lasica for the Online Journalism Review (OJR), published on May 24 and 31, 2001. Just before I'm throwing this away for the benefit of the paperless office, I'll quote what I highlighted back then:

From: 'Blogging as a Form of Journalism', May 24, 2001:

Dugg: Lawyer: U.S. teen had no warning of Finnish school shooter's plans | CNN.com

"(...) NORRISTOWN, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A Pennsylvania teen jailed on suspicion of plotting a Columbine-style attack on his old school exchanged e-mail with the disturbed student who killed eight people in a similar shooting in Finland, the boy's lawyer said Monday.

But J. David Farrell, the attorney for 14-year-old Dillon Cossey, said his client had no warning that Pekka-Eric Auvinen was preparing the rampage that left eight people dead at his high school outside Helsinki. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: YouTuber Warned of Finnish Gunman in June, But No One Listened | Wired.com

"(...) months before the fateful video was posted, one prolific YouTube user known as TheAmazingAtheist called for the police to investigate Auvinen and others who had been posting videos glorifying the Columbine shooters and Timothy McVeigh, saying they were showing warning signs of being more than simply infatuated or interested in violence.

On June 7,2007 TheAmazingAtheist, whose real name appears to be Terroja Lee Kincaid, posted a rant filmed in his garage entitled "Columbine Killers, Mental Midgets & Social Darwinism." About 7 minutes into the video, which drew plenty of comments in June, he says:

(...) We are always talking about warning signs. Well if you want to talk about warning signs, there they are [pointing off screen to a list of URLs of YouTube profiles, including Auvinen's old profile NaturalSelector89]. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Finland changes course on EU firearms directive | Helsingin Sanomat

"(...) The Finnish government decided on Friday to propose a change in the law on firearms, restricting the acquisition of guns by those under the age of 18. Until now guns have been available to children 15 and above, if a parent approves. (...) There were denials from government ranks that the change had been prompted by the Jokela (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Police detain teen over YouTube massacre plot | NEWS.com.au

"(...) FINNISH police detained a teenager who allegedly posted a video on YouTube threatening a massacre similar to the one last week at a high school in Finland, police said.

The 16-year-old was arrested on Friday in Maaninka, about 400km north of Helsinki, and questioned yesterday, a local police spokesman said. Authorities also seized his computer.

(...) “He says that it was a joke, that he had no intention” of carrying out a massacre, according to the spokesman.

(...) Eight people, including five boys aged 16 to 18, the 61-year-old headmistress, a 42-year-old female nurse and a 25-year-old single mother, were killed in Wednesday's shooting at Jokela High School in southern Finland. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Finland shocked at fatal shooting | BBC NEWS

"(...) Gun ownership per capita in Finland is the third highest in the world, although incidents of this kind are extremely rare in a country that prides itself on very low levels of violent crime.

An attack by a young suicide bomber on a shopping mall in Helsinki in 2002, where seven people died, including the bomber, is the only such incident of this kind that has occurred in Finland in living memory. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Profile of Pekka-Erik Auvinen, the YouTube killer | NEWS.com.au

"(..) PEKKA-ERIC Auvinen sat among the chaos he had caused at Jokela High School, pressed a .22 calibre pistol against his skull and pulled the trigger. He had done what he had come to do.

He had killed seven students and a teacher in the small town of Tuusula, in southern Finland. The killing spree came just hours after he posted a final video on YouTube, the last chapter in a grim catalogue that foreshadowed his deadly intent. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Teenage Killer Leaves Suicide Note | Newsvine - AP

"(...) A bullied teenage outcast with radical views scribbled a suicide note bidding farewell to his family before unleashing an indiscriminate killing campaign at his high school, police said Thursday. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: School Shooter Kills 8, Self in Finland | Newsvine - AP

"(...) An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at his high school in this placid town in southern Finland on Wednesday, killing seven other students and the principal before mortally wounding himself in a rampage that stunned a nation where gun crime is rare. (...)"

read more | digg story

Bowling for Jokela (English - latest take)

(TAKE 3: Mäntyharju, Finland, Thursday, November 8, 2007; 11:05 hrs. Finnish time; 09:05 hrs. UTC/GMT)

Nine people died in a shooting incident on Wednesday at Jokela High School, in Tuusula, Finland, close to the Finnish capital Helsinki.

The victims include the head master of the school, a health worker and six pupils: five boys and a girl.

The killer, 18-year-old pupil Pekka-Erik Auvinen, went from classroom to classroom, firing at people. After shooting his eight victims, he shot himself through the head. Auvinen died in hospital on Wednesday evening.

Ten people were admitted to hospital with lighter injuries.

Already earlier this week, Finnish and English-language videos appeared on YouTube ('Jokela High School Massacre'), in which Auvinen expressed his intentions.

After the massacre today, the young man was described by one of the school's teachers as an "extreme-right, militant type".

The videos were removed from the YouTube service on Wednesday afternoon.

Finland's Prime Minister, Matti Vanhanen, called de shooting "terrible and tragic", adding that it was extremely difficult to prevent incidents such as these.

President Tarja Halonen expressed her condolences and sympathy with the victims and their families.

Bowling for Jokela (English - all takes)

(TAKE 3: Mäntyharju, Finland, Thursday, November 8, 2007; 11:05 hrs. Finnish time; 09:05 hrs. UTC/GMT)

Nine people died in a shooting incident on Wednesday at Jokela High School, in Tuusula, Finland, close to the Finnish capital Helsinki.

The victims include the head master of the school, a health worker and six pupils: five boys and a girl.

The killer, 18-year-old pupil Pekka-Erik Auvinen, went from classroom to classroom, firing at people. After shooting his eight victims, he shot himself through the head. Auvinen died in hospital on Wednesday evening.

Ten people were admitted to hospital with lighter injuries.

Already earlier this week, Finnish and English-language videos appeared on YouTube ('Jokela High School Massacre'), in which Auvinen expressed his intentions.

After the massacre today, the young man was described by one of the school's teachers as an "extreme-right, militant type".

The videos were removed from the YouTube service on Wednesday afternoon.

Finland's Prime Minister, Matti Vanhanen, called de shooting "terrible and tragic", adding that it was extremely difficult to prevent incidents such as these.

President Tarja Halonen expressed her condolences and sympathy with the victims and their families.

---

(TAKE 2: Mäntyharju, Finland; 20:00 uur Finnish time; 18:00 hrs. UTC/GMT)

Eight people died in a shooting incident today at Jokela High School, in Tuusula, Finland, close to the Finnish capital Helsinki.

The victims include the female head master of the school and seven pupils: five boys and two girls.

After shooting his eight victims, the killer, a 18-year-old pupil, shot himself through the head. He was hospitalized in extremely critical condition.

Police have confirmed that ten people were admitted to hospital with lighter injuries.

Already before today, Finnish and English-language videos appeared on YouTube ('Jokela High School Massacre'), in which the suspect expressed his intentions.

After the massacre today, the young man was described by one of the school's teachers as an "extreme-right, militant type".

Meanwhile the videos have been removed from the YouTube service.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen called de shooting "terrible and tragic", adding that it was extremely difficult to prevent incidents such as these.

President Tarja Halonen has expressed her condolences and sympathy with the victims and their familiies.

---

(TAKE 1: Mäntyharju, Finland; 19:50 uur Finnish time; 17:50 hrs. UTC/GMT)

Eight people died in a shooting incident today at Jokela High School, in Tuusula, Finland, close to the Finnish capital Helsinki.

We're in the finals!

(Photo by Andrew Mason shared via Flickr.com under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license)

Nokia's intranet news service, the News Hub, has made it to the finals of the CiB Awards 2007, by the British Association of Communicators in Business.

We are looking at an award of excellence for 'Best navigation/usability for intranet' (Class 14B).

Thank you RedHouse Lane! Thank you team mates at Nokia Corporate Communications!

As I wrote on April 24:

In the March issue (.pdf) of their Red Current newsletter, communications consultancy Redhouse Lane tell how they worked with my team at Nokia to rebrand and redesign the News Hub, Nokia's global news and conversation intranet site.

"(...) The result is  a striking exhibition of the power of Web 2.0 giving staff the tools to access the information they need, in the way they want - and then encouraging them to comment, contribute and collaborate. (...)"

---

"(...)The introduction of affiliate program has assisted the small business to run their business profitably as affiliates. The webhosting strategies of famous companies like godaddy cater all necessary attributes with respect to customer’s demand. They can even make a website design according to their customer products and update it with the passage of time. The search engine manager utilizes all strategic techniques of search engine marketing to increase their profits. The rates of internet phone service are very economical along with high speed and quality internet voip. There are different kinds of online website design software or templates to develop website easily. (...)"

Privacy concerns about Smart Digg Button

[UPDATE, May 24, 2007: In his post on HitTail's blog, 'Online Marketing Webinars Coming Soon to HitTail', Mike Levin inadvertently links to the post you're looking at. Instead, the link from Mike's post should really point at: 'Can I talk to you about "northern exposure videos" for a moment?']

Out of the 74 responses to date to Derek van Vliet's Smart Digg Button for Firefox, only one, by Muhammad, expresses concerns about privacy, "(...) as this extension tells Digg about every page you're visiting for as long as it's enabled (...)".

Derek, I'm certain this is a serious concern to many potential users. Would you care to respond?

Digg.com serves "Story of the Century" on my first day

(Image: Our Solar System, from Wikipedia's entry on "Planets", public domain, by NASA.)

As luck will have it... the day I started using Digg.com, it offered me what a journalist on the BBC World Service this morning called "(...) potentially the news story of the century in terms of the future of human kind":

First Habitable Planet Oustide Of The Solar System

(The BBC, of course, have their own version: 'New 'super-Earth' found in space')

Why I started "digging" yesterday was that a colleague of mine - after hearing about some of the stuff I do in corporate communications - had asked me if I'd like to help introduce some new collaborative news selection functionalities to Nokia's intranet.

So I decided to get some first-hand experience with Digg. The concept seemed interesting and so I wanted to get a "feel" for how it works, what works and what doesn't.

Being a novice to Digg, when I came across the "habitable planet" story I wasn't quite sure how serious to take it. After all, I was just being taught by way of Neil Patel's Beginner's Guide to Digg that, in order to get read, submissions to Digg should:

1. Make a statement and do not be dull;
2. Be controversial and make false promises; and/or
3. Use keywords in the title that diggers love and that are also relevant to the story.

But, whoa, am I convinced now! Every news junkie has to hook on to Digg!

By the way, the planet story reminds me of a presentation to Pop!Tech, podcast on IT Conversations, in which Carolyn Porco, Imaging Team Leader of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) makes a passionate appeal to human kind to make space exploration a top priority.

From the podcast description:

"(...) [One of Saturn's moons], Titan, is where the Huygens probe landed in January 2005. From the panoramic images taken during the decent and the all the data that has been collected since, the CICLOPS team is excited to see signs that fluids once flowed over the surface, that the atmosphere has precipitation and that the probe itself may have landed on a shoreline. All-in-all, the Titan moon may give us a significant glimpse of what the Earth was like before living organisms. (...)"

PS: To support the point of yesterday's piece on Wikipedia As A News Medium, the site's entry on Gliese 581 c seems nicely up-to-date.

Nokia's News Hub: Web 2.0 in action

(Photo by Andrew Mason shared via Flickr.com under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license)

In the March issue (.pdf) of their Red Current newsletter, communications consultancy Redhouse Lane tell how they worked with my team at Nokia to rebrand and redesign the News Hub, Nokia's global news and conversation intranet site.

"(...) The result is  a striking exhibition of the power of Web 2.0 giving staff the tools to access the information they need, in the way they want - and then encouraging them to comment, contribute and collaborate. (...)"

A use case for monitoring

(Photo by LeoL30)

Here's a use case for monitoring. I have to admit it was a mere coincidence that I noticed David Sifry's 'State of the Blogosphere' so shortly after he'd published it in the middle of the night of February 6.

This is an important conversation, I thought, and so I wanted to join in swiftly, while it was fresh. Passionately I read and re-read his piece, made some interpretations of my own and contributed two blog entries on the topic of Blogosphere growth, one immediately and another one the next week:

Does Technorati see Blogosphere growth slowing down? (February 6, 2006)

Are half of the blogs that Technorati tracks dead? (February 14, 2006)

I was looking forward to part 2, but it caught me by surprise. David published it on February 13, and I noticed it only the next day. I blogged my comments as fast as I could, and dropped my first line on David's post after 26 hours. In the end I wrote two blog posts:

The Green Slider, a nifty piece of usability engineering (February 15, 2006)

David Sifry's top-one-percent 'Magic Middle' (February 20, 2006)

So, what I would really like next time is: to be the first to know when David Sifry posts his 'State of the Blogosphere' piece. Now, I could of course drop David a line, but what I'm really looking for is a tool that alerts me, specifically for this purpose, by email or even SMS.

I don't think A Google Alert is going to cut it, as the signal-to-noise ratio will be too low. A Technorati watchlist? What happened to Spyonit?

So the use case is: I know something is going to happen (on the Web). I don't know when, but I want to be the very second person to know. Even if it's in the middle of the night - you can wake me up for it. But no noise please, only signal.

Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com:

• David Sifry's top-one-percent 'Magic Middle' (February 20, 2006)
• Are half of the blogs that Technorati tracks dead? (February 14, 2006)
• Google Alerts serve The Long Tail (February 1, 2006)

Technorati Tags: Blogosphere, monitoring, news, search, alerts, watchlists

A business model for collaboratively filtered news?

SUMMARY: Amazon.com has demonstrated the power of collaborative filtering when it comes to selling books. But how about a hyper-personalized, collaboratively filtered news offering? The main challenge may be the business model. Would ad revenue be able to cover the cost?

Via 'Wink Search', an entry on Zeevveez's QTSaver blog, I found an interesting review of 'New Ideas in Search (Wink, Gravee)', on Business 2.0's B2Day blog. Erick Schonfeld writes:

(...) Wink is very much a social search engine, since results are based on how other people previously rated and tagged things. The question is: Will a search based on public tags turn up substantially different results than a regular Google search based on link popularity? After all, at their core both are based on humans making their preferences public (one by explicitly tagging a Website with a descriptive keyword, the other by linking to it). (...)

I agree with Erick that one might wonder if Wink can do a better job than Google, considering that both engines rank search results by popularity. (And by the way, when it comes to tagging and searching, del.icio.us does a very good job, too.)

My interest in search is inspired primarily by one use case: hyper-personalized news provision. When it comes to search relevance, I'm convinced that artificial intelligence is the Holy Grail.

So I've been wondering if anyone is working on an Amazon.com for news. RSS feeds rule, tagging is the tool, Google is gool, but the best way to filter news by relevance is by looking at the news preferences of like-minded users.

Think about a collaboratively filtered news offering. If you and I have had very similar patterns of news consumption in the past, and you have already read and rated a particular piece of news, chances are that I will be interested in reading it, too.

There is an important difference between link popularity and collaborative filtering. Link popularity tells us which search results are considered most relevant to a particular search query by "everybody" (that is, anybody who ever published a link or tagged a piece of published content). Collaborative filtering, on the other hand, sorts search results on the basis of what is know about me, compared to people like me.

That's the power of Amazon.com when it comes to selling books.

So perhaps the main challenge with collaboratively filtered news is the business model. It can only work given a critical mass of users. Which means that the service should probably be offered for free on the Internet. Does that mean ads would have to pay for it? And could they?

The unfulfilled needs that Memeorandum addresses

Robert Scoble mentioned it in his interview with ITconversations. And, of course, on his blog. And on my quest for the "right" blogroll, I ran into it again: Memeorandum.

Gabe Rivera wanted Memeorandum to address some unfulfilled needs in online news, he wrote.

"(...) They are:

1. Recognize the web as editor: There's this notion that blogs collectively function as news editor. No, not every last blog on Earth. Tapping the thoughts of all of humanity uniformly would predictably lead to trivial, even spammy "news". But today there are rather large communities of knowledgeable, sophisticated commentators, (and yes) even reporters writing on the web, signaling in real time what's worthy of wider discussion. I want memeorandum to tap this signal.
2. Rapidly uncover new sources: Sometimes breaking news is posted to a blog created just to relate that news. Sometimes the author of the most insightful analysis piece at 2PM was a relative unknown at 1PM. It happens. I want memeorandum to highlight such work, without delay.
3. Relate the conversation: Communication on the web naturally tends toward conversation. It follows from human nature plus the Internet's immediacy. Blog posts react to news articles, essays reference editorials. And links abound. Yet most news sites do very little to relate the form of conversations unfolding in real time. Some seem to deny that a conversation is even occurring. I want memeorandum to be a clear exception.

(...)"

Related posts on www.josschuurmans.com:

• Emily Robbins figures out how to blog (September  20, 2005)
• Google Blog Search - The Algorithm Has Landed (September 15, 2005)
• Technorati tracks the books conversation (August 4, 2005)