Monday Round-Up: Forecasting the Future of Digital Publication

In the ongoing debate of potential business models for media publications, the New York Times believes it has found the right model for media publication, and an analyst at Barclay's agrees. According to Kannan Venkateshwar, digital subscriptions to the paper will exceed its print subscriptions by 2014. In another realm of publication, Amazon in the UK (not to be confused with a sound-alike song name) has announced their ebook sales have outstripped their print book sales. Both Amazon and the Times must contend with lower prices for digital media access as they explore how to best utilize technology, but increasing online subscriptions may point towards what the future holds for the paper publishing. In today's Monday Round-Up, we also have the latest on disaster mapping, the newest mobile developments, and more:

• Chinese crowdsource mappers were able to assemble a disaster map quicker than the Chinese government regarding recent flooding in Beijing.
• If you know of any crisis-related Twitter hash tags, you can add to a comprehensive list being created to cover related terms.
• The BBC has released a Policy Briefing discussing how humanitarian agencies can improve communications using technology in response to disasters.
• China's largest search engine company, Baidu, is teaming up with the most popular micro blogging provider, Sina, to create an integrated mobile model using both services.
• Major chip makers for phones in developing countries are focusing on creating low-cost mobiles.
• In a merging of techonlogies new and old, Deutsche Welle designed a way to listen to educational radio programs using SMS and basic mobile phones.
• Nuance, the same company that powers Siri, is working to expand their voice technology to integrate with more mobile applications and use voice recognition for security purposes.
• One iPhone user encountered an issue with iCloud, as purchasing a second-hand iPhone allowed the original user to access his files. Just as Woz predicted!
• Hackers sympathetic to pro-Assad forces gained access to Reuters news, reemphasizing the need to maintain a healthy skepticism of any source.
• Are you trying to teach a new technology user how to use internet searching, or perhaps tyring to improve your own skills? Try out the Google a day puzzles.
• Attempting to address the technology gender gap, a new intitiative called "Data2X' will be a collaboration between USAID, the World Bank, PARIS21, and Gallup to provide and compare gender dissaggreated information.
• A great new blog entry from TechChange discusses the importance of coordination between empowering local voices with official responses from authorities.
• Iran has announced that it finds the worldwide web "untrustworthy", and has decided to move its major state agencies off of the internet and eventually onto a state-run intranet.