What news sites offer free archives?

I just re-read Dave Winer's Davenet post yesterday on NY Times Archive, Weblogs and RSS. And then I read the 44 or so comments on the deal at the Harvard Law weblog.

From now on, for any non-exclusive news stories, I'll no longer link to a NY Times article on the subject, if the choice is to (a) link to a Times story that disappears behind a pay firewall after 7 days, or (b) to jump through hoops by adding a complex set of RSS coding to a Times article's url.

I happen to read about a quarter of my online news through a news aggregator, but I disagree with Dave's passing comment that "You probably have to use an aggregator to read the Times, if you run a weblog and want to point to Times articles, but imho, if you're serious about weblogs and news, you're probably already doing it this way." Some 99.9% of readers still get their news from the Web, not from an aggregator, and the percentage of bloggers who do the same is probably over 95%. We're years away from RSS becoming a mass medium for either readers or publishers.

Still, Dave's arrangement with the Times is a win for the online world, given the alternative of rotted links after seven days. (And when the heck did that kick in at the Times?)

Given all the above, I'm wondering if readers can point to any resource that discloses whether news sites have an open or closed archive. I understand that Britain's BBC News Online and the Guardian both do. Others?

Blair's secret war pact

Guardian UK: Former Blair Cabinet minister Clare Short claims senior intelligence figures briefed her that Tony Blair had made a secret agreement last summer with George Bush to invade Iraq in February or March.

America's next great newspaper will be online

Weekly Standard: David Gelernter is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and professor of computer science at Yale, says the Next Great American Newspaper Will Be Online. Excerpt:

America's next great newspaper is a wonderful idea--but it will have to be published on the web and not on paper, and as a new style web newspaper, not one of today's conventional web-based losers. It is coming--and (in the nature of things) it will redefine the news story and the newspaper.

Thanks to Rafat Ali of paidContent.org, via Romenesko, for the pointer.

Gallery: a free Web slide-show program

Scot, by the way, is playing with a program I hadn't seen before: Gallery, which I take to be a free open-source software program available for download. Here's a Father's Day photo slide show Scot just put up.

Punishing Apple

In follow-up to Saturday's item about Microsoft pulling the plug on Internet Explorer for the Mac, Scot Hacker gives his take on Punishing Apple:

Safari has proven that Apple and the open source community together can build a better, far faster browser, without Microsoft's help. Technology isn't the issue. Politics is. Potential switchers want comfort food, want to know that IE is waiting for them on the Mac side (even if it's slow). Microsoft's move punishes Apple for threatening the monopoly by pulling a security blanket away from potential customers.

Enhancing Outlook's search function

OK, here's a question: The search function in Outlook 2002 drives me crazy. More often than not, I need to search for an email that I sent someone a week or month ago, Instead, the whiz-bang programmers at Microsoft designed it so that it begins the search at the beginning of my Outlook files -- that is, 1999. That adds an extra two to three minutes on top of every search I conduct.

Anyone know of a workaround to make a search in Outlook work intelligently?

Former aide takes aim at war on terror

Washington Post: Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror.

Five days before the war began in Iraq, as President Bush prepared to raise the terrorism threat level to orange, a top White House counterterrorism adviser unlocked the steel door to his office, an intelligence vault secured by an electronic keypad, a combination lock and an alarm. He sat down and turned to his inbox.

"Things were dicey," said Rand Beers, recalling the stack of classified reports about plots to shoot, bomb, burn and poison Americans. He stared at the color-coded threats for five minutes. Then he called his wife: I'm quitting.

Beers's resignation surprised Washington, but what he did next was even more astounding. Eight weeks after leaving the Bush White House, he volunteered as national security adviser for Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Democratic candidate for president, in a campaign to oust his former boss. All of which points to a question: What does this intelligence insider know?

"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out." ...

Astonishing. But not surprising, given this administration's track record of duplicity.

How about Kerry-Beers for the Demo ticket?

Here's the same story on MSNBC.com with a better photo of Beers.

Meantime, the Iraq intelligence coverup is unraveling:

NY Times: 2 Former Cabinet Members Say Britain Exaggerated Iraq Claims.

Magazines that cross the ethical line

USA Today:

If you noticed that Julia Roberts' head is slapped on the wrong body on the cover of the new Redbook, you've got a sharp set of eyes. Magazines run doctored shots, like this one of Jennifer Aniston, to give their cover an air of exclusivity.

In fact, Roberts and other Hollywood A-listers are fuming over altered magazine covers that look bizarre at best and disproportionately freakish at worst.

It's known as airbrushing, or digital manipulation. At magazines, it's standard practice to zap a zit, or brighten those baby blues. It's even de rigueur for a supermodel like Tyra Banks, whose flawless printed perfection is at odds with her actual persona, and comes at a price.

"I disappoint people who meet me in person because I don't look like me," she says. "But the public is really hard on people in the industry and your image has to be perfect, and I openly admit that I have cellulite and I get that touched off."

But, as those who do the tweaking point out, there's a huge difference between eradicating stretch marks and cutting body parts from two separate photos and fusing them together into a composite shot, as Redbook did with Roberts in its July issue and a clipped-together Jennifer Aniston in June. ...

There is a huge difference, and media critics, watchogs and everyday readers ought to raise hell about this shoddy, unscrupulous and, yes, unethical practice.

When will online news dominate print?

noinvite.com: Online News Will Prevail Over Print Editions in 10 Years. "Future generations, who grow up with the Internet and never had their father read the newspaper at the breakfast table, will be lost to print," says German journalist Joachim Voegele.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

CBS News, NYT in media spat

Variety: CBS Blasts NY Times. "Unlike the New York Times' own ethical problems, there is no question about the integrity of CBS News," says CBS in response to the Times story about its offers to interview Jessica Lynch.

Thanks to Patrick Phillips and IWantMedia for the pointer.

Democracy at work

Just got an automated email response from my congressman regarding the MoveOn online petition I signed yesterday calling for an independent, bipartisan commission to look into the question of whether intelligence information was distorted before we went to war in Iraq.

I'd half forgotten that my neighborhood was redistricted after the 2000 Census, and in the last election we were moved from the district of Ellen Tauscher (a moderate Democrat) into the district of Richard Pombo (a right-wing Republican).

So it's likely my email wound up in the digital scrap heap in Pombo's office.

Phonecam Nation

Xeni Jardin in Wired: Everyone's posting instant photos on the Web. Get ready for your close-up.

United will let you email -- for a price

San Jose Merc: United to offer in-flight e-mail on all U.S. flights.

Hoping to get a jump on the competition in the scramble for business travelers, United Airlines plans to be the first commercial carrier to offer two-way e-mail capability aboard all its domestic flights.

By the end of the year, passengers on all flights will be able to plug their laptops into jacks on the Verizon Airfone handsets, which will use technology by Tenzing Communications to transmit e-mails.

United has offered JetConnect service on a trial basis on some 767 domestic aircraft since December -- charging $5.99 per flight for instant messaging, one-way text messaging and select news, weather and other information. It is now expanding to JetConnect with e-mail, which increases the cost to $15.98 but enables passengers to send and receive e-mail, including attachments.

Another 10 cents will be added for each kilobyte of data over 2 kilobytes.