Yahoo Finance: Playing a little loose with quotes

So when does butting two quotes together -- even with the attribution in the middle -- become misleading?

I generally tell students to avoid it unless there is all but the shortest of breaks between them.

Yahoo Finance took some serious liberties with this one, however, in this story about T-Mobile taking on Verizon.

Here is the quote in the story:

"There is huge price competition going on among the carriers and it's very good for consumers," he says. "If T-Mobile is willing to eat my contract I'm definitely going to give them consideration, whereas in the past I might not have."

Now take a look at the video. The first quote begins at 1:50. Then there is a big gap, until the second quote begins at 1:13. I contend this is too much to imply these quotes were said back to back or nearly so. Your thoughts?

Yahoo change can break mail lists

Oops.

If you have a mail list set up so that any replies go only to the person sending and not to the list -- and if you have any Yahoo addresses -- a Yahoo policy change could cause you some problems.

See http://yahoomail.tumblr.com/post/82426900353/yahoo-dmarc-policy-change-what-should-senders-do

For a more technical explainer: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247512/Yahoo_email_anti_spoofing_policy_breaks_mailing_lists?pageNumber=1

Yahoo's 'Down But Not Out' unemployment project

File this under pretty compelling reading.

I had not heard of this till a pointer from Cyberjournalist today, but I'm really intrigued by Yahoo's "Down But Not Out" project to crowdsource the long-term unemployment morass many Americans have found themselves in.

The tricked-out Tumblr blog contains emails from those without jobs. It's pretty compelling -- and at times scary -- reading. The idea could - and probably should - be adapted by local newsrooms. You could build a pretty interesting picture of what is happening around you. (And did we mention the engagement - Yahoo says the average time on site was eight minutes.)

The Yahoo folks explained to the Online News Association what they did to put this together.

Yahoo's cuts, Delicious, etc., and dealing with ambiguity

Lots has been posted around the Web on Yahoo's decision to cut some services, such as the Declicious social bookmarking service. There's also some word that Flickr could be in danger.


Yet, as at least one comment has noted, this is also the Web and in five or 10 years, we may well be mourning the loss of Twitter or Facebook or, who knows, Google

These two - Delicious and Flickr - are what I would call "core" services, used by so many people and so interlinked by other sites that their demise would cause some serious damage. So let me just toss in my two quick cents:

• This does highlight something we have yet to come to grips with: deciding if we should have a way to preserve such "core" services and, if so, how. It's easy to put a list out of alternatives to something like Delicious, but at some point a service has so many users and crosslinks that the reality of wholesale shifting is impractical.
• If there is to be some way to preserve and provide an orderly transition, how do we fund and accomplish this? Delicious, for instance, says it is considering ways to exit from Yahoo and not shut down, but the impression is that this is more of a fire drill than the result of careful planning (more here on the problems).
• This decade will gradually see the erosion of such "free" services. The Web is not free; there are server and bandwidth and other costs. And there probably will always be neat new useful services that will be free out of the starting gate. But at some point past the newness and the optimism and idealism, a business crossroads is reached - can an ad-based model or a freemium model actually support them? I think we will see more services closing or switching to some kind of subscription model. The challenge is how to keep the prices low enough that they are accessible. I'm thinking it has to be in the $5 to $10 a year - yes, a year - range.
• I'm worried that this will just reinforce the paranoia some media managers/companies have about "free" and open-source services. As a result, they cut themselves off from useful innovation. News organizations must be willing to use all forms of software and services that can advance their journalism. The successful manager will be one who can evaluate what services are critical and must be kept on more proprietary platforms the organization can control and what are more flexible and short term and can be experimented with on free and low-cost platforms provided by others. Part of that will be keeping up with alternatives and having plans and strategies for migrating as the Web changes.

If there one thing we should know by now, it's that the Web is a living, morphing thing and that if you cannot deal with its ambiguity, your chances of success are much slimmer.
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UPDATE: Read this post on ReadWriteWeb to get an idea how journalists can use sites such as Delicious to stay ahead of the competition.

South Financial - Follow

As reported here in early June, The South Financial Group subpoenaed Yahoo for the names of people who have been posting to Yahoo's TSFG message board, especially those commenting on the company's executives and a lawsuit brought by a former employee.

The Greenville News has now followed up with some details.

The lawyers still aren't talking, but in court filings they say they think that with the subpoenas they can find "admissible evidence" for the lawsuit involving former employee Ben Floyd, who says he was fired after revealing that security equipment was put in CEO Mack Whittle's home.

According to the story:

According to court records, South Financial has subpoenaed Yahoo e-mail messages for user accounts identified as: “stinkinattorney,” “nobuytsfgdog,” “themgamecocks,” “anotherscbanker,” “laurenschwalje,” “blackbeasst,” and “nomospag.”

South Financial wants the Internet protocol, or IP, records of all user profiles found on Yahoo’s message board titled South Financial Group (TSFG), including the dates and times each user profile was first created, according to court records.

The company also wants stored e-mails, postings, user profile data and IP addresses that belong to each user profile found at Yahoo; records, instructions, or directions that placed any of the user profiles under surveillance by Yahoo; and dates and times any passwords were changed for each user profile, according to court records.

South Financial also is seeking data that could identify any user that included conversations related to the South Financial message board where a user used “anonymous” as the login to gain access to the message board, according to court records.

One wonders specifically what "admissible evidence" TSFG hopes to find. Judging by the names and their posts, however, it sounds more like TSFG wants to find out whether any of its critics are current or former workers and whether they've been posting on company time -- and the lawsuit provides the cover to do it.

South Financial Subpoenas Yahoo Account Info

Greenville-based South Financial Group, which is being sued by its former chief of security, has apparently subpoenaed Yahoo for information about people who commented on a financial message board about the case.

One poster on the message board revealed on Saturday morning that he had received notice of the subpoena from Yahoo. Others confirmed they had received a similar notice from the company, whch is the parent of Carolina First Bank:

NOTICE OF SUBPOENA
We are writing to inform you that Yahoo! has been served with a subpoena requiring disclosure of information related to your user account at Yahoo!

The subpoena was issued in an action entitled:
Ben D. Floyd v. Mack I. Whittle, Jr., et al.
pending in:
Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, Case No. 107CV-086642
The subpoena, dated May 24, 2007, requires that Yahoo! produce documents related to your Yahoo! account. Please be aware that your communications with Yahoo! may also be discoverable.

The attorney for the subpoenaing party, The South Financial Group, is
Gregory C. Cheng, Esquire
Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.
633 West Fifth Street, 53rd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90071
213-239-9800 (p)
213-239-9045 (f)
Please be advised that Yahoo! will respond to the subpoena 15 days from the date of this notice, unless we have notice that a motion to quash the subpoena (or other legally appropriate challenge to the subpoena) has been filed, or the matter has been otherwise resolved.
You may wish to consult an attorney to advise you about the foregoing.
Please contact the subpoenaing party to obtain a copy of the subpoena. If you wish to contact Yahoo! regarding this matter, please direct your correspondence to notice-user@yahoo-inc.com.

Cheng, reached at his office on Monday, said, "I can't really talk about it" and would not provide any details.

None of those on the Yahoo board use their real names on their posts, and there was no way to contact them. One speculated, however, that their information was being subpoenaed because they participated in a discussion about the original lawsuit -- a discussion that at times became hostile toward the company's executives.

The original reports were on a lawsuit filed in March in Richland County, S.C., by former security chief Ben Floyd, who alleges bank security equipment was put in South Financial CEO Mack Whttle's home.

This latest lawsuit was filed May 25 in Santa Clara County (Calif.) Superior Court. The online site does not provide full-text access to the complaint.