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Digital Planet: 03/05/2011

Factual: Science & Nature

03/05/2011

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, 03/05/2011

Major news organisations in Slovakia erect a pay wall for online access

Major news organisations in Slovakia make users pay online content; Computer Based Testing for university exams in Nigeria; James Gleick discusses the evolution of information and technology

Slovakia's major news organisations are taking their online content, previously free to access, and making users pay for it.  They are not the first to erect a so-called 'pay wall', Rupert Murdoch is already doing it with big titles like the Wall Street Journal and the Times newspaper in London.  Gareth Mitchell talks to Tomas Bello, one of the key players behind the change about how effectively will be asked to pay for media content online.


In Nigeria there is an attempt to stamp out corruption in its examination system. Some exam boards and universities in the country believe that swapping exam papers for computer terminals offers a solution.  Click talks to David Angwin and Tunde Oladipo about how cloud computing might provide the answers.


Too much information has been the complaint of many down the years with the advance of technology from the printing press to the home computer.  It is the subject of The Information, a new book by James Gleick which looks at the evolution of the information age.  Gleick in particular focuses on some of the key players in the story of our present ability to process bits of information.  He talks to Colin Grant about Shannon's information theory and reflects on his early 18th century predecessors Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage (a "father of the computer") and the inventor of the difference machine.

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03/05/2011

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