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President Barack Obama prepared to take the public’s pulse on healthcare reform Wednesday, conducting a town hall forum in Virginia.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown and former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman have raised the most campaign money this year for the 2010 California governor’s race, according to preliminary figures released Wednesday.

Just because President Obama has a 60-seat majority in the Senate doesn’t mean he’s letting up on his public push for health care.

Do you know why trust has gained so much value in the attention economy? Bombarded by an increasingly complex life, by more news and information, by marketing and sales calls of all kinds, people are increasingly “on-the-move” and with less and less time to devote to anyone specific thing. They are rushing from a website to another, from a conversation to another. And this is why their attention has become more valuable than gold these days.

Photo credit: Iurii Davydov

In the era of social media, traditional marketing channels are tricky venues to promote your product. Consumers are suspicious of marketing, they don’t trust the buzz, and relationships created ad hoc to sell a product do not work anymore.

Today, the relationship must come before the sale, not the other way around. By creating and nurturing your community and by making customers your good friends it is possible to develop new relationships and loyal supporters which can be an invaluable asset for any company in the market today.

Once you have a community of passionate fans and followers, it becomes easier to share your commercial recommendations and advice in ways that are more spontaneous, natural and credible.

George Benckenstein explains why building trust and relationships with your customers is so important. Inside communities people influence one another. Personal interests become social objects and spread across your network. Are you part of it? Do you help your community and customers learn and relate with each other in ways that augment their attention investment in you?

That’s what the new Return On Investment is all about. The new ROI is the useful, tangible influence you create rather than the investment you make.

Here, in more detail, George Benckenstein’s vision:

Chris Crum at WebProNews.com has pieced together some very interesting pieces of information regarding Facebook, a former Googler and a new payment system.

In this undated photo released by Airbus Industries, one of its A310 passenger planes, the same type that crashed in the Indian Ocean, is seen flying in an undisclosed location.

Associated Press Writer= EDITOR’S NOTE: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices.

Criminal gangs are attempting to infiltrate police forces by exploiting a recent recruitment drive, a senior anti-corruption officer has said.

Maybe you were there when Neda died. If you were, you saw a tragedy, of course, a 26-year-old Iranian protester gunned down in the streets.

A British Columbia man was in hospital Sunday after being shot twice by a police officer in this small town on the province’s Sunshine Coast.

A good guidebook is more than just a compilation of information. It’s a travel companion with personality, a sense of humor and, usually, strengths and weaknesses.

Hide Video A 19-year-old Detroit-area man has been sentenced to one to 15 years behind bars in the attempted sexual assault of a teenager he met on the popular Internet networking site Facebook.

Media Literacy moves from recognising and comprehending information to the higher order critical thinking skills such as questioning, analysing and evaluating that information. (Source: OFcom)

Photo credit: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

Inside this Media Literacy digest:

• Attention and Distraction - Educators and trainers face competition for attention from mobile devices and social networking services.
• Social Media: Trends and Implications For Learning - …explore emerging technological and related research trends from a perspective of social and networked learning theory.
• Failing New Grading Approaches - A prof doesn’t have the funds available to hire teaching assistants to help with grading, so he adopts a peer-review model.
• Language and Connectedness - Connections create words, language, and conceptual understanding, all formed by social connectedness and continually adaptations fostered by feedback and interactions.
• Opera Unite - Whenever a system is created - school models, corporations, or browsers - ideologies of the age are embedded.
• Social. Networks. Learning. Organizations - How should organizations “restructure” on network principles?

George Siemens‘ Media Literacy Digest takes you to places, facts and resources to help you make sense of the fascinating changes that new media technologies are bringing to the educational landscape.

Here all the details:

“Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Jackson has just died,” the woman called out breathlessly upon boarding a Manhattan bus, moments after the news had broken.

Jeff Goldblum was caught up in a sick internet death hoax as as reports of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson’s deaths spread on social networking websites on Thursday night.