Reporters notified via
email of pontiff's passing
Critics may accuse the Roman Catholic Church of being
behind the times, but with the recent death of Pope John Paul II, the
Vatican proved quite media and technology savvy. The pope died at 9:37
p.m. (local Rome time) on Saturday. Fifteen minutes later the media
received text messages preparing them for an announcement. The
announcement itself was emailed in a Word document to journalists'
hand-held computers – purchased at the Vatican's suggestion—reading
simply, "The Holy father died this evening at 21:37 in his private
apartment." The relay was so swift, in fact, that TV viewers knew the
news even before the thousands of faithful praying outside the pope's
window in St. Peters Square. Television crews were then able to capture in
real time the crowd's reaction to Archbishop Leonardo Sandri's
announcement minutes later: a loud round of applause, as dictated by the
Italian tradition. This extreme openness with the media was a definite
break from
the church's
historical precedence, such as the Vatican's secrecy about
Pope John XXIII's stomach cancer until just days before his death in 1963.
XM Radio gains 540K new subscribers during Q1
Sirius Satellite Radio may have
gotten more headlines over the past year with its signing of Howard
Stern, but it still trails competitor XM Satellite Radio by more than 1.5
million subscribers. And XM’s jumping ahead even more. XM gained 540,000
new subscribers during the first three months of 2005, a 68 percent
increase over the comparable period a year ago. The new total brings the
station to a total of 3.77 million subscribers. Sirius has 1.2 million
subscribers. Some of XM’s new customers come courtesy of new cars
purchased with XM radios built in them. Over the past three months, XM has
started offering its service in rental cars from National and Budget, as
well as in AirTran jets, to attract new customers.
Study: Podcasters becoming, like, the new blogs
For years the buzz over MP3s has involved illegal
downloading of copyrighted material. But according to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project,
MP3 users are also embracing homemade audio called Podcasts, which
are quite legal and definitely not subject to copyright restrictions.
Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adult MP3 owners, or about 6 million
Americans, have downloaded podcast
programs from the internet. Many people
regard the year-old medium as the audio equivalent to online blogs. Podcasters create radio-like programs of commentary,
music or humor, save them in MP3 audio format and post them online.
The survey was based on telephone interviews with 208 digital-media
player owners between Feb. 21 and March 21.
New
program has kids sweating to video games
Children today are less physically active than those of
previous generations, and video games certainly deserve some of the
blame. A new study is turning that problem into the solution.
Eighty-five children are participating in the West Virginia Public
Employees Insurance Agency’s six-month at-home study using the
video game Dance Revolution to increase activity. An overweight
11-year-old boy lost 10 pounds within two weeks of playing the game.
PEIA also has spent about $10,000 on a two-year pilot project with
the state Department of Education to put the game in 20 schools for
use in physical education and health classes. In West Virginia,
nearly 43 percent of children screened in the Coronary Artery Risk Detection
in Appalachian Communities project were considered overweight and
more than 25 percent were obese.
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