Why Estonia is important in the e-world

Excellent piece this week by Phil Noble about Estonia, its president and its rising place in the e-world.

Go ahead and drool over the price of an unlimited data plan for a tablet. It's OK.

New convergence newsletters

I have been remiss in reminding you that new issues of The Convergence Newsletter are out;

May-June: Our convergence and communities issue has two articles about creating online communities - one is a Q&A with Pegasus News founder Mike Orren, and I wade in with some obsrvations on what it takes to create online community through what we've learned at Hartsville Today.

June: Our international issue features an eye-opening piece by Fulbright scholar Alice Klement on the challenges of teaching convergent journalism in Ethiopia where power outages have to be figured into all the other challenges.

Why two issues in June? Yeah, we got a bit behind, partly because we need your articles. Please send proposals to convedit@mailbox.sc.edu. And in September, we'll have a good summary by Edgar Huang on his research into HD streaming technologies.

AP Stylebook Update - Datelines

One other major update recently was a vastly expanded list of international cities that in datelines and in copy no longer require the country name to follow. The list is below, with the new entries in bold (I've thrown in the domestic list as well, which did not change, so you have a handy all-in-one reference):

Domestic
ATLANTA
BALTIMORE, BOSTON
CHICAGO, CINCINNATI, CLEVELAND
DALLAS, DENVER, DETROIT
HONOLULU, HOUSTON
INDIANAPOLIS
LAS VEGAS, LOS ANGELES
MIAMI, MILWAUKEE, MINNEAPOLIS
NEW ORLEANS, NEW YORK
OKLAHOMA CITY
PHILADELPHIA, PHOENIX, PITTSBURGH
ST. LOUIS, SALT LAKE CITY, SAN ANTONIO, SAN DIEGO, SAN FRANCISCO, SEATTLE
WASHINGTON

International
AMSTERDAM
BAGHDAD, BANGKOK, BEIJING, BEIRUT, BERLIN, BOGOTA, BRUSSELS
CAIRO, COPENHAGEN
DJIBOUTI, DUBLIN
FRANKFURT
GENEVA, GIBRALTAR, GUATEMALA CITY
HAMBURG, HAVANA, HELSINKI, HONG KONG
ISLAMABAD, ISTANBUL
JERUSALEM, JOHANNESBURG
KABUL, KUWAIT CITY
LONDON, LUXEMBOURG
MACAU, MEXICO CITY, MILAN, MADRID, MONACO, MONTREAL, MOSCOW,   MUNICH
NEW DELHI
OSLO, OTTAWA
PANAMA CITY, PARIS, PRAGUE
QUEBEC CITY
RIO DE JANEIRO, ROME
SAN MARINO, SAO PAULO, SHANGHAI, SINGAPORE, STOCKHOLM, SYDNEY
TOKYO, TORONTO
VATICAN CITY, VIENNA
ZURICH

(If you had an early list, Vancouver also was on it until someone thought better of it and said, oops, there's that pesky Vancouver, Wash., too.)

Global Post live

"Global Post," the new venture into international reporting online, has gone live.

To keep the costs down -- aside from being all-digital at the moment -- GP's model is to work with foreign correspondents in-country who already have other projects in the works.

On the revenue side, founders Charles Sennott, an experienced foreign correspondent with the Boston Globe, and Philip Balboni, former head of New England Cable News, have a three-legged model that's becoming more common: advertising, premium content subscriptions and syndication to other sites and, one would assume, a news industry struggling to maintain its own content.

Here's wishing them the best of luck.

Patrick Thornton has a wide-ranging, pre-launch interview with Sennott at Beatblogging.org. You can download or stream the audio.