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Virginia Tech Collegiate Times on Today’s Shooting

virginia tech shootingsUPDATED with audio & multimedia links.

On this tragic and upsetting day in which at least 25 33 are dead and dozens more injured in shootings on the VTU campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, a shout-out to the staff of the campus newspaper, the Collegiate Times.

The student paper originally broke the story and continues releasing updates:

Monday, April 16th 2007 9:47AM
Shots were fired on campus in West Ambler Johnson Hall in the early morning hours.

The Collegiate Times is currently investigating the story. More information will be posted as it is made available.

The Virginia Tech Web site is overloaded (try their IP directly) but the Collegiate Times is now being hosted by their parent host, CollegeMedia and continues reporting with primarily text-only entries and the bandwidth is being handled fine. Wikipedia is on this as well, just as fast, if not faster, than the AP/CNN, etc. A screenshot of the VT Website is available here at flickr – latest photos are here.

Student-run college radio station WUVT remains on the air and can be streamed (when not overloaded) here. The screenshot above is via ABC News Now, being streamed live on the AT&T Yahoo! today portal (also available here and here). Apparently, this video by VT grad student Jamal Albarghouti has been viewed over 900,000 on CNN’s Web site as of 3 p.m. EDT (per Jarvis).

With the death count expected to rise, today’s massacre is already the deadliest school shooting rampage in U.S. history (more than double that of Columbine).

Several groups and postings on facebook, a common question being: why was Norris Hall open and classes in session at 9:30 (when the majority of killings took place in a classroom) after one student was murdered in the dorm two hours earlier and the killer remained on the loose?

Thoughts and prayers to all the victims, friends and family. And please, media, take it easy on them — anyone who wants to upload video/photos knows how to do it, it’s just insensitive to be begging for citizen-generated content under such terrifying headlines.

ADDED: The audio of VTU President Charles W. Steger’s statement, hosted below.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger statement on shootings [ 3:21 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
VT President's Second Statement Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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Google Buys DoubleClick: More Context, Less Banners?

One could only hope.

Everyone wondered if they’d ever really pull the trigger on this, or stick to their adsense guns while DoubleClick ambled along — and the day has come. $3.1B later, Google is now the king of all Internet advertising (although Yahoo! remains no slouch, most recently expanding it’s one-stop online news ad shop to include McClatchy).

Sergey Brin once hinted at DoubleClick being the “life preserver” as John Battelle mentions in The Search (and as Biz2.0 reminds today), but the metaphor was baswed on Adwords going under. While Adsense is doing fine, Google apparently seized on this opportunity to box out Microsoft and go large.

Rafat at PaidContent reports that the $3.1 billion cash offer is “much more than the rumored $2 billion that Microsoft was intending to pay.” It’s also 10 times DCLK (private since 2005)’s revenue.

How will this work out? Here’s Google’s Presser. Battelle’s analysis forthcoming at his blog.

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Oops, Rove Deleted All His E-mail

rove_070413.jpgTeam BushCo doesn’t even try to make stuff up anymore. The latest maneuver in the White House scandal involving e-mailing on unofficial servers to discuss official matters (which is illegal as I noted last week)

The White House said that up to 5 million e-mails may have been “lost” when the WH switched from using Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook in 2002 and 2003.

So ridiculous, it’s almost funny. But not. In fact, Rove was so addicted to deleting his e-mail he had to be singled out by White House staffers and barred from deleting e-mail on his RNC-hosted server. Froomkin has the best coverage of the affair.

Rep. Henry Waxman, who has led the investigation into the mysteriously missing White House e-mails, will discuss this and other investigations of the Bush Administration on Sunday in Hollywood. (10:00 a.m., Plummer Park, Art Room 2, 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard Hollywood 90046)