Gillian Tett looks beyond yesterday's Today item on "jurisdiction shopping" by banks. She warns there is an unintended consequence of the current worldwide desire to bash the bankers. Legislators in key countries are busy unilaterally changing internationally-agreed rules. Unfortunately, Tett says, this makes it more likely that practices illegal in one country but legal in another will be used to cover up looming catastrophes in the capital markets.
Google is currently running a "limited preview" of its upcoming browser application Google Wave.
Essentially, this is a communication and file sharing tool. At first glance, it seems like a mish mash of commonplace features available in other applications. Indeed, if you only bother to watch the first five minutes of Google's promo video (which is longer than Cloverfield) you would probably think so.
However this video is as noticable as a knife to the temple, making the application for journalists blindingly obvious.
The scenario that I thought of was foreign reporting. If you are working on an article with a colleague, it's usually best to be in the same place at the same time. However, with Google Wave I can see a journalist in New York working with a journalist in London. Documents, video, photos and other documents can be shared once a "wave" is created.
I have been following the progress of Google Wave for over a year now and I use it regularly to work on complex documents collaboratively (it's absolutely amazing for something like creating a statute as every little point can be branched off into a new discussion) and it's also great for online gaming purposes.
In fact I actually planned to talk about Google Wave very soon in a blog post, but I guess you beat me to it!
There are already many website that make use of the brilliant 'public' wave utility to interact with their readers, such as that of the newspaper Chicago RedEye. The possibility is really there for the whole 'story creation' to become more transparent - if this is a good idea or not is very debatable though. It also has the potential to maybe involve so-called 'citizen journalists' in a constructive manner.
I honestly believe a newsroom could definitely harness the collaborative potential of Google Wave to a great extent -once it finally becomes publicly available and they have worked several bugs and usability issues out of the system.
For very good analysis of its potential for journalism then check out this LA Times article and this article from Mashable.
PS. If anyone from CfJ wants to have a play around with Wave let me know and I'll send you an invite.