Columbia University plans to explore these issues, Emily Bell, director of the Columbia J-School’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said at Betaworks Betaday on Thursday. To that end, the Tow Center will run a weekend workshop on sensor journalism in June and will fund a few projects. And next year, Bell said, the Tow Center plans to run a “sensor newsroom classroom” in partnership with the architecture school.

Some of the challenges are technical: How can journalists and newsrooms build their own low-cost sensing techniques? WNYC’s John Keefe, for instance, built a cicada tracker to figure out exactly when the expected cicada plague will hit New York City this summer. Can other organizations do the same thing?

“How do you get the really efficient things from sense networks in a way that helps you do human reporting?” Bell said. The techniques also create ethical questions: “We are moving into this world where the line between transparency and privacy is constantly in tension. When you can survey everything, what do you report?”

“Practically, we’re very close to being able to survey most of what people do most of the time,” Bell told Betaworks’ Andrew McLaughlin. “I come from Europe, where everything is solved by regulation, In America, the momentum is very much with business rather than the individual. [Google CEO] Eric Schmidt said at the journalism school the other day that privacy is all about making good judgment calls about what you put online. That’s just not true. You can’t make adequate judgment calls to control your own data. That’s only going to get worse.”

In a blog post Friday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced two new initiatives to appease France: “First, Google has agreed to create a €60 million [USD $82 million] Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers. Second, Google will deepen our partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using our advertising technology.” Google won’t pay for links, however.

As paidContent’s Jeff John Roberts reported recently, French publishers had wanted more money, between €70 and €100 million euros. And a tweet from Frédéric Filloux suggests that more details still have to be worked out. The agreement is similar to one that Google reached with Belgian publishers in December; in that deal, Google agreed to buy around $6 million worth of advertising.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Shutterstock user alp33.

British arch-satirist Armando Iannucci has announced that his target will be the hubris and hilarity in California’s technology scene. Talking to the UK Observer, he explained that his next project would not focus on his usual political playground:

“I’m thinking about the power of the internet,” said Iannucci. “Microsoft, Google, Facebook; you have these twentysomethings who have a way into billions of households. Where’s the power gone? The power is gravitating towards these companies.”
[…]
“I’m also interested in that personal thing of what it does to you when you’re 25 and you’re a multibillionaire and everyone in the world knows who you are,” said Iannucci.

For anyone worried about a series of hackneyed jokes about poking your friends or uncovering , don’t worry! Iannucci has good form.

He’s best known for The Thick Of It — a highly acclaimed, tremendously smart series that exposes the inner machinations of British government — and has recently transferred that to America with a run of Veep, his series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, on HBO.

According to the report, he’s already written a pilot of his show about the world of technology and social media, and is in discussions with the network about it.

In truth, Iannucci’s job should be fairly easy, because Silicon Valley has enough excesses and idiocies that it effectively satirizes itself.

From ostentatious parties to the increasing fixation with celebrity investors, there is no lack of material. Oh, and then there’s the hypocrisy. What about the likes of Eric Schmidt, who says only people with something to hide require privacy — and yet demands his girlfriends stay quiet? Or Mark Zuckerberg, who says most people don’t care that privacy no longer exists — yet makes billions from encouraging that shift in opinion.

All ripe for a slam or two, don’t you think? I’m sure you can think of more.

But even though a week in the Valley may provide him enough material for a 17 season run, Iannucci says his reason for targeting the technology industry isn’t because it’s easy — but because it’s real. Forget Westminster, or even the West Wing: the power today lies on the companies who command the net, he argues.

“Where’s the power gone?” he told The Observer. “The power is gravitating towards these companies.”

Now that the summer solstice has passed and summer is in full swing, how has Google progressed toward that goal?

Well, there are currently four Google TV devices, including only two integrated TVs - some way behind the target.

When asked for a list of Google TV-compatible gadgets, Google pointed paidContent to Google TV’s web page, listing only Sony’s NSZ-GS7, replacing its predecessor NSZ-GT1. Others, however, are Vizio’s Co-Star box and two LG TV sets.

What went wrong, Eric? A Google spokesperson tells paidContent:

“As with any Google product, we have very aggressive targets, but you’ll just have to stay tuned for future announcements about our progress in the smart TV space. As of today, we’re excited to bring new products to the market in 2012.”

Buoyed by Android’s widespread adoption by smartphone manufacturers, Schmidt believed gaining Google TV carriage would be almost as inevitable. But the reality has so far turned out differently.

Google’s spokesperson did not refer to upcoming Google TV products, but they include Sony’s NSZ-GP9, a Blu-ray player with Google TV.

Logitech’s Google TV-compatible Revue was cancelled in November and Sony cancelled four integrated Google TVs in February.

We are, however, confident that Google is, of course, currently negotiating with some other electronics makers to try bringing more Google TVs to market.

“There’s a significant number of OEM coming out that we’re working with that we’re not at liberty to discuss at this point,” said Guarav Shah, general manager for Marvell’s digital entertainment Business unit, said this week (via Betanews).

“Moving from the middle of July through the rest of the year, there will be other OEMs announcing their products.”

Late on Monday, just before the expiration of a deadline imposed in May by the European Commission, news hit that Eric Schmidt had sent a letter to the EC competition chief Joaquin Almunia. In it, he is said to have responded to a number of questions about Google’s behavior in the search market — offering what is described as a “settlement offer.”

Sounds like a step forward, right?

But hang on a minute: this is complicated stuff. So let’s try parsing this for a second.

In this case we’re talking about four main areas of Google’s activity that the regulator is concerned about:

• That Google prefers to link to its own services, like Images and Maps, instead of those provided by rivals
• That it copies material from rival services for its own travel and restaurant listings
• That it tries to tie sites to exclusive advertising agreements
• That it stops advertisers from exporting campaigns to other platforms

So what is Google actually proposing to alleviate these worries? We don’t know: the details of Google’s letter have yet to go public, and the only thing that European officials have said is that they are in receipt of the letter. So, despite speculation by legal experts who think Google could be offering to hold arbitration talks with any offended parties, we are still in the dark.

And even if Google is briefing some people on what it’s putting forward, its own opinion of what it’s saying may not tally with what Almunia’s office will make of it. The Mountain View company has shown recently that it has a habit of responding within the letter of the law but not necessarily the spirit: for example with a terse response to objections over its controversial new privacy policy in February.

There are plenty of reasons to think that Google’s proposals here may be substantive.

It wants to head off threats from other areas, such as investigations into Motorola Mobility and data usage. And then there’s the threat of a fine that could run into the billions of dollars. It doesn’t seem to want war, even if it’s on a countdown to conflict.

But fixing some of these problems could cut to the heart of its business, and that may not be something it is prepared to do. And let’s remember that European antitrust fines, even large ones, don’t always work. So before we all jump on the settlement bandwagon, let’s wait to see what Google’s really offering — because it may not be what we were thinking.

Read the full post on GigaOm…

And that fact was laid before Android’s biggest exponent, Eric Schmidt, on Wednesday…

Conference delegate Anina – a model, fashionista and tech personality – told Schmidt during Q&A at the Le Web conference that having to submit her apps to umpteen different app stores makes her life hard.

“We’re still developing our plan,” Schmidt replied from the stage to the crowd. “Because of the China (political) situation, anything we do with China is more complicated than with anywhere else.

“I counted more than 70 (app) stores of one kind or another, and I was just in Beijing.

“My advice would just be to figure out the three or four largest, tied to the mobile carriers – they get government spending and have volume.

“It’s a real problem and we’re working on that.”

So Schmidt really advised an Android developer to use app stores other than his own Android Market for distribution. And that is the reality in China – Chinese companies have taken Google’s Android ball and ran farther with it than those in the west, where Android is still closely tied to Google…

• Platforms: Many of the leading telco and internet brands there have been forking Android in to their own, radically different native versions of the OS, like Tencent’s iQQ, that don’t require users have Google accounts.
• Stores: On top of that, the app market economy is highly liberalised. If you thought Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Appstore was a threat to Android Market, consider the dozens of alternatives that already dominate Android Market in China.

Although Research2Guidance recently used its data to suggest Chinese download very few Android apps, quite the opposite is true…

China is actually seeing astronomical hyper-growth in apps, and the number of Chinese registered with a mobile app store grew from 100 million to 150 million this Q3 alone, according to government figures. Research2Guidance was only looking at Chinese downloads from Google’s official Android Market, which is little used in China compared with its rivals.

This is what open-source has wrought. And Google will be challenged to put these demons back in Android’s box.

“By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google (NSDQ: GOOG) TV embedded in it,” Schmidt said on stage at the Le Web conference.

The whole connected TV space will explode in 2012, as more new TVs ship with internet connectivity, bringing new content services to the living room. The on-screen gateway to that room is up for grabs.

So far, Google TV has shipped, somewhat experimentally and not wildly successfully, on just a Logitech box and a Sony (NYSE: SNE) TV.

Home electronics makers themselves look well placed. Samsung, LG (SEO: 066570), Panasonic and their ilk, including Sony, are already preferring to ship their own smart TV interfaces with their TVs. Samsung TV already has almost 1,000 apps for its Smart TV system.

Convincing any of the manufacturers to adopt Google TV over their own varieties looks way more difficult than it has been in the mobile sector. And that’s not even accounting for how, in many countries, TV is dominated by several big platforms and pay-TV vendors in a way mobile is not.

Schmidt, whose latest Android Ice Cream Sandwich variant is slick, is bullish because he thinks Google TV, which is essentially Android, will replicate the operating system’s mobile success. Told, on stage, that iPhone has a mobile lead, Schmidt retorted, rhetorically…

“What kind of lead? Android is ahead of the iPhone now – by unit volume, with ICS features, prices are lower, with more vendors, more pricepoints – do I need to continue the list? It’s free.”

Though Schmidt talked incessantly about competition being good, his defensive response to a suggestion that Google+ is a Facebook imitator ran contrary to this.

“One company comes to define a certain area – you’re better off trying to find something new that’s differentiated,” Schmidt said on that topic. “That’s what we’re trying to do with Google+, with many more products to come.”

Asked from the floor why the quality of Android’s app line-up pales against iOS’ despite Android’s shipment win and despite its apps catching up by volume, Schmidt said:

“Six months from now, you’ll say the opposite. Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume. The volume is favoured by the open approach Google is taking. Whether you like ICS or not, you will want to develop for that platform, perhaps even first.”

To summarise – in six months’ time, Android will be trumping iOS for apps and will be the dominant smart TV platform, Schmidt suggested.

The comments, made by Schmidt during a visit to South Korea — home base to Android phone vendors Samsung and LG (SEO: 066570) — echo the statements Google first made when it announced that it would buy Motorola for $12.5 billion.

That Google executives like Schmidt continue to be asked questions about how this arrangement will work could point to people continuing to remain skeptical that Google will keep its word.

Schmidt told media in Korea that the plan is to run Motorola “sufficiently and independently,” and “that it will not violate the openness of Android.” He added: “We’re not going to change in any material way the way we operate.” (via Reuters)

The worry amongst some observers — despite Google saying otherwise — has been that by buying a rival Android device maker, Google would channel more efforts into Motorola’s business and provide less support to those OEMs that compete with Motorola and with multibillion-dollar smartphone and tablet businesses built on the platform.

Indeed, giving Motorola preferential treatment would have seemed like an obvious strategy to promote Motorola’s business, so Google’s continuing insistence that it will make sure that Android remains as easy for others to use as it is today appears to make it even more likely that a very primary reason for the acquisition was for Motorola’s patent portfolio.

Motorola Mobility owns more than 17,000 patents that Google will be able to use to defend Android, which is facing a three-front patent war: facing off separately against Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Oracle in the courts; and driving Android OEMs into signing licensing deals with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to avoid further courtroom battles. There are already 10 Android device makes paying licensing fees to Microsoft, and that number could soon go up to 11 with the addition of Huawei.

Today, Google’s main sources of revenue from Android come from making itself the default search engine on the platform (generating more audience and therefore higher ad rates), advertising that runs in its apps, and purchases around the apps, from which Google gets a commission. It’s not clear how much actual revenue Google has made from Android to date but as of the end of June, there were 500,000 Android activations made every day, and it was growing at 4.4 percent week-on-week, according to Google executive Andy Rubin.

In other comments made while speaking in South Korea, Schmidt defended Google in response to remarks made by the late Steve Jobs in his recently-released biography, who believed Android was a crude copy of original ideas from Apple: “Most people would agree that Google is a great innovator,” said Schmidt (via AP/Yahoo), later noting that “the Android efforts started before the iPhone efforts.”

The questions coming from the Zeitgeist audience covered Big Topics like Motorola (NYSE: MMI) and what the merger will mean, patents, challenges to Google (NSDQ: GOOG), risk-taking and what Google would be synonymous with in the future (“search” being the key word of the last several years). Their questions and answers also cover competitors like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO).

As anyone watching the company knows, the two have very different leadership styles and some of that is evident in how they approach the questions: Schmidt very fast talking, Page a little more methodical. Something that also comes across in the video (whether true or just created for an impression is not clear): they can work the room well together.

Video embedded below: