Eubie's notes

Christian Science Monitor: What’s happening to the bees. Several stories this year on disappearing bee colonies. The experts call it “colony collapse disorder” CCD and they site several possible reasons including: an Asian mite, the stress on the bees of shipping colonies around the country, and environmental issues, such as pesticides.

Also NY Times: Mystery Disease Is Threat to Bee Colonies— Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some commercial beekeepers have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees.

NY Times: Google, Online Ad Giant, Looks at Radio and TV

Google may one day rock the television and radio advertising markets. But its TV plans have yet to take shape, and its other efforts to extend its dominance over online advertising into offline media like newspapers and radio are inching along. The early results are mixed, suggesting that Google’s successful transition from online kingpin to credible player in traditional media is far from assured.

TechWorld: Hackers build private IM channel — Hackers have built their own encrypted IM (instant-message) program to shield themselves from law enforcement agencies.

The application, called CarderIM, is a sophisticated tool hackers are using to sell information such as credit-card numbers or e-mail addresses, part of an underground economy dealing in financial data…

I don’t think Wal-Mart would be able to get away with this. There would be too much backlash. USAToday: Circuit City to fire 3,400 workers, will hire lower-cost replacements — Circuit City Stores’ decision to lay off 3,400 employees in order to hire lower-paid replacements is raising questions about the impact of severe cost-cutting on employee morale. and Washington Post: Circuit City Cuts 3,400 ‘Overpaid’ Workers — Circuit City fired 3,400 employees in stores across the country yesterday, saying they were making too much money and would be replaced by new hires willing to work for less.

NY Times: Life Magazine, Its Pages Dwindling, Will Cease Publication

Life magazine will cease publication next month, the third time since Life’s founding in 1936 that its owner has pulled the plug.
This time, the magazine’s demise looks permanent, largely because Life is moving its huge archive of photographs onto the Web, where consumers will be able to download them free.

NY Times: History, Digitized (and Abridged) — In the Internet age, historical records that have not been converted to digital form could vanish from the nation’s memory.

Digitizing books is easy compared with music, film, especially given copyright issues, and other items, such as handwritten notes. The cost of converting so much material is why historical archives are turning to groups such as Google to pay the cost.

The articles touched upon interesting collections, such as:

• The collection of ancient manuscripts of Matthew Parker, an archbishop of Canterbury, which are housed at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University
• A letter written by Jacqueline Kennedy to Leonard Bernstein after he conducted a memorial for Robert F. Kennedy
• More than 1 million photos from The New York World-Telegram & Son
• Copies of The National Intelligencer, a newspaper published in Washington in much of the 19th century.

NY Times: Basic Instincts: On Wearing Our Salaries on Our Sleeves — Given how careful we are today about all things financial it’s striking that people appear to have been more frank about money 200 years ago.

Another classic for me.

WSJ: Linux Starts to Find Home on Desktops. The Linux operating system, having made inroads into corporate servers, is showing hints of inching into employees’ PCs.

Atlanta Journal-constitution: Two Atlantans stay afloat in crowded field of magazines. Sustaining a magazine is tough, but Sharpe and Salwen project that the magazine will be profitable by the end of 2008.. Anita Sharpe is a former editor of the Atlanta Business Chronicle.