Idiot bureaucrats who attempt to prevent the dissemination of basic, publicly funded government data by charging astronomical fees should be forced to pay the inevitable judgement against them out of their own pocket. "Santa Clara County's move to charge astronomical fees for public access to its electronic maps has backfired in a $500,000 legal settlement. Government watchdogs say it is the largest payment of its kind in a California records disclosure dispute. The settlement paid this week to cover the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition's legal bills ends a three-year court odyssey. In June 2006, the nonprofit watchdog group sued the county for refusing to provide its geographic information systems "basemap" following a California Public Records Act request."

"If the near-term prospects for the housing market are grim, the outlook appears to be even worse for an eventual recovery for real estate advertising in newspapers. … there's no perfuming the results of his new poll, which discovered that nearly 6 out of every 10 real estate agents think newspaper advertising is useless. While the survey found that nearly 80% of agents still buy print ads from time to time, they report doing so to appease the sellers they represent – not because they actually think it will move any homes. … The high-priced, online real estate sites operated by most newspapers 'don't impress,' says the Aim study. Newspaper sites frequently lack the tools and often lack the depth of inventory available at specialized web competitors." Good time not to be like "most newspapers."

"The 'old media' may not have gotten this story first, but who really cares? Is this the sort of story we want serious news organizations to hotly pursue in these times of newsroom layoffs, slimmed down news holes and shrinking aspirations for what they cover? I certainly hope not."

"Richard Richtmyer is in trouble with his bosses at the Associated Press for something he wrote on Facebook. Did he burn a source? Trash a story subject? Worse: He mildly criticized one of AP's hundreds of members. Richtmyer made a head-slappingly obvious observation about the executives who turned AP member McClatchy Co. from a thriving newspaper chain into a sad penny stock. … One of Richtmyer 51 "friends" at the paranoid, insular newswire ratted him out to management for saying this very true thing, and now he's got an official reprimand for not constantly toadying up to every last AP member, no matter how vulgar."

"An Associated Press reporter’s official reprimand over an innocuous comment on his Facebook page has sparked the ire of union officials. They are now demanding that AP clarify its ethics guidelines and are also urging reporters to watch who they add to their friends lists. … Richard Richtmyer, a Philadelphia-based newsman, set off Tuesday's tempest with a seemingly harmless comment posted to his Facebook profile late last month criticizing the executive management of newspaper publisher McClatchy, whose stock plummeted following a 2006 acquisition of San Jose-based Knight Ridder. 'It seems like the ones who orchestrated the whole mess should be losing their jobs or getting pushed into smaller quarters,' Richtmyer wrote on May 28. 'But they aren't.'"

"Event Tracking is a feature of Google Analytics that allows you to track visitor actions that don't correspond directly to pageviews. It's a great fit for tracking things like: Downloads of a PDF or file; interaction with dynamic, AJAX sites; interaction with Adobe Flash objects, embedded videos and other media. Unlike virtual pageviews, Event Tracking will not alter your pageview count. This makes it the preferred method for tracking a variety of visitor actions."

When you have to explain your current confused branding scheme before addressing your forthcoming confused branding scheme, you must be Microsoft. Live Search Maps is now Bing Maps, and Virtual Earth is now Bing Maps for Enterprise. Nonsense like this is such a shame because I like the product.

AdSense accounts can finally be linked to Google Analytics, allowing "you to see more details about specific pages on your site and analyze ad performance." But it still won't tell you which ads were actually clicked.

Ford says their team drove a Fusion hybrid 1,445.7 miles on a single tank of gas, and did so while avoiding the most insane hypermiling practices. Left unmentioned was the car's 500-gallon tank.

"That breeze you feel gusting in from the Atlantic is thousands of soccer fans in the United States sighing with relief. For the news is in that Fox Soccer Channel will be broadcasting the Champions League next season. Which means that fans will be hearing a lot less of quite possibly the world's most hated sports commentator, Tommy Smyth."

"Cartographica is a Geographic Information System (GIS) package for the Macintosh. It is used to create, analyze, explore, manipulate and present geospatial data." Could be interesting. Via Steve Doig on NICAR-L.

Google Chief Economist Hal Varian walks through the auction and explains how your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid and Quality Score determines how much you actually pay for an ad click on Google's search results pages.