Mediagazer: How to fake flawless predictions for any sports event or election using social media (Andy Baio/Medium)

9:25 AM ET, July 20, 2014

Top News:

Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:

Kindle Unlimited: worth it if you buy 12+ books/year and find the limited catalogue appealing — Is Kindle Unlimited worth it? — Amazon.com introduced a new subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, on Friday. This $9.99 per month, all-you-can-eat feature gives you full access to a hundreds of thousands of e-books.

Discussion: ReadWrite

David Pierce / The Verge:
Why Amazon's ‘Netflix for books’ might be doomed before it starts

Discussion: @tcarmody, @chicagoterp, @arielledross, @wmerydith, Talking New Media, TechCrunch, @exprimak, @sdarlington, @robertcain, @piercedavid, @thomasjager, Re/code, Forbes, PandoDaily, Gigaom, PC Pro and The Daily Caller

Jeremy Greenfield / Forbes:
When Amazon Acts Like A Start-up: Why Amazon Has Entered The Ebook Subscription Market

Discussion: @forbes, Softpedia News, Globe and Mail, Digital Book World, GalleyCat, Publishers Lunch and Amazon.com

Nilay Patel / Vox:

Price of media is falling to zero because it's not scarce anymore, but inherently ubiquitous — Can you answer these 4 questions and save the media industry from Taylor Swift? — TWEET SHARE +1 LINKEDIN EMAIL PRINT — That headline is 100 percent pure clickbait, the finest in the world.

Discussion: @kitson and @jacobschulman

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Qplay, TiVo founders' service for streaming video playlists to TVs, shuts down six months after launch — Qplay, Internet Set-Top Startup Formed by TiVo Founders, Shuts Down — Qplay, the Internet video-device and app startup launched by the founders of TiVo, is closing its doors less …

Discussion: Forbes, Qplay, BetaNews and Home Media Magazine

Matt Wilstein / Mediaite:

NBC reverses decision to pull reporter Ayman Mohyeldin from Gaza; will send him back as soon as possible — NBC News Reverses Decision, Will Put Ayman Mohyeldin Back in Gaza — On Thursday, NBC News reportedly pulled correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of the Gaza Strip citing “security concerns.”

Source:

How the New York Times created its popular “Spot the Ball” World Cup interactive — HOW WE MADE “SPOT THE BALL” — Photoshop, interaction design, and the secret origins of the game — Even among the many wonderful World Cup interactives and news apps we saw this year, the

Discussion: @_alastair and @dansinker

Andy Baio / Medium:

How to fake flawless predictions for any sports event or election using social media — How to Flawlessly Predict Anything on the Internet — Spark conspiracies, incite riots, and predict the future with a confidence scam for the Twitter era — On Saturday, a Twitter account appeared …

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

CIR wants to turn investigative reporting into a weekly public radio show with Reveal — It's a rare feat for the first episode of a brand new show to win a Peabody. And yet that's what happened with Reveal, the still new public radio show from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Discussion: @reveal and @cironline

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:

Forbes devalued its brand by adding misleading native advertising and bad contributors — No silver bullets — Lewis DVorkin performed a miracle with Forbes ... almost. He almost rescued a dying brand, almost helped get it sold to a new owner, and almost rescued the Forbes family …

Maria Konnikova:

How to Be a Better Online Reader — Soon after Maryanne Wolf published “Proust and the Squid,” a history of the science and the development of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first century, she began to receive letters from readers. Hundreds of them.

Discussion: @jcreidtx and @ahmed

Kadhim Shubber / Wired.co.uk:

Russia caught editing Wikipedia entry about MH17 — The world is still reeling from the shock of the deaths of 298 people on Malaysian flight MH17, which was shot down in Ukraine yesterday, but the battle to write and re-write history has already begun online.

Discussion: Daily Dot, The Week, Mashable, Slate, The Verge, Gizmodo and Boing Boing

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times:

Standoff over Dodgers games could be defining moment in sports TV — The Dodgers are in first place in their division and gunning for a berth in the World Series in October. But as the second half of the season begins Friday, most local fans aren't able to watch any of it on television.

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Layoffs hit Daily News again — The Daily News is downsizing again, as we reported earlier in Capital's morning media newsletter. — Multiple sources said that buyouts have recently been offered to some employees and that layoffs have been enacted yesterday and today.