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UNC Chapel Hill senior Eve Carson was shot and killed early Wednesday morning.

Police are calling the murder a random act of violence. Carson’s roommates reported seeing her about 1:30 a.m. at their home the day of the shooting.

We’re observing a moment of silence in memory of the UNC student body president murdered yesterday. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Search engine news can wait.

Instead we’ll look at how search engines have eliminated the last vestiges of privacy, turned private lives into public figures, and created a global community that can celebrate and honor an ordinary life.

Chapel Hill police said the body of Eve Marie Carson was found lying at the intersection of Hillcrest Road and Hillcrest Circle about a mile from campus at approximately 5 a.m. No identifying information was found at the scene — no ID card, keys, purse, or wallet.

Investigators said officers found Eve Carson, a 22-year-old senior from Athens, Ga., after gunshots were reported in the area. Police spokesman Lt. Kevin Gunter told “The News & Observer” of Raleigh that Carson had been shot several times, at least once in the head.

Police found Carson’s vehicle, a blue 2005 Toyota Highlander with Georgia plates, after receiving a tip Thursday afternoon from a witness who spotted it near Franklin Street in Chapel Hill.

Lauren Burk, an 18-year-old Auburn University student from Marietta, Ga., was found wounded by a gunshot on a roadside Tuesday night, about five miles from the school. She died later at a local hospital.

Her car was found burning in a parking lot on campus.

No one knows whetther the co-ed murders are linked. In the past, the UNC shooting would have been a brief segment on national television news; a CNN pundits’ exchange, and the inevitable “48 Hours Mystery” segment.

ABC News, though, has received more than 200 comments online from readers.

USA Today ended its breaking news story with “Here’s a Facebook page from her successful campaign (for UNC student body president.) The USA today reporter linked to her inauguration speech video on YouTube, showing her welcoming students back to campus.

The photo of Eve Carson on USAToday.com? An “Image taken from YouTube.”

Other TV news sites featured slideshows: “Pictures Of Eve Carson.” Links helped searchers put together a better picture of her life:

Link: Video Of Carson’s Inauguration As UNC Student Body President
Link: Message From UNC Chancellor About Carson’s Death
Link: Eve Carson Memorial Page On Facebook

Today, with millions of people searching for information on Eve Carson, social search engines provide a way to celebrate a life. I found one photo on FlickR tagged “eve carson.” The photo shows “A bagpipe player promoting Eve Carson for student body president.”

The most moving photos online show Eve Carson working with impoverished families in Ecuador. Take the time to watch “The Gifts of Poverty,” on the Morehead Scholars and Alumni site. You can listen to Eve Carson sharing her experiences in her own voice.

The multimedia slide show was produced by students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The credits: Nancy Donaldson, photography editing; Ray M. Jones, audio editing; Pailin Wedel, audio gathering; and Ashlie White, photography.

People all over the world will be touched by Eve Carson’s too-brief life as they search for answers about her death.

The author of Enders Game Orson Scott Card wrote in his sci-fi novel Speaker For The Dead that we would one day celebrate lives by speaking the truth about an ordinary life. To Speak for the dead, one must first unravel the web of secrets surrounding lives. One must speak not only for the dead, but for all humanity.

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In honor of today’s New Hampshire primaries, we decided to hold our own Paid Search Presidential Primaries. Let’s see how campaign dollars flowed to paid search, through buys on Google, Yahoo, MSN Live and Ask.
Our winners? In New Hampshire, the Republican race is too close to call. Both John McCain and Mitt [...]

Sliding attention isn’t only a problem for newspapers, as ABC, CBS, and NBC all saw viewership decline through 2007.
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The old media vs. new media arguments are usually based on the idea of print vs. the Internet.  CBS Radio is also looking to update itself, however, by embracing and expanding its online branches.
Impressive growth, big arrangements - it’s all part of what sounds like a fairly realistic plan.  CBS Radio “will invest in [...]

Online video remains popular with close to two-thirds of Internet users viewing video online each week.

News and user-generated content are the most viewed categories, followed by movie previews and music videos. TV shows round out the top five. The data comes from a TV-Internet study by Horowitz Associates.
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The Writers Guild of America strike has been an interesting debacle to watch, complete with a host of issues the public might not have thought of before. The inevitable convergence of the Internet and TV is one of them; the continued homogenization of American culture is another. Fortunately, the revolution is being blogged about. What [...]

It’s not clear exactly how much money Specific Media got in a recent round of funding.  What is clear, though, is that the online advertising company intends to go on an acquisition spree.
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Fox Broadcasting and Apple iTunes are partnering to offer free premiere episodes of seven of Fox’s television programs.

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Ex-Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon won’t have her contract renewed with ABC, after a year of working with the network.

It looks like the Amanda Across America tour will include a stop at the unemployment office. An unremarkable year with ABC, aside from a mildly controversial stint doing videos for chemical giant DuPont, ended not with a [...]

Trademark and copyright issues are complicated. That’s why we have lawyers. Luckily, we also have lawyers willing to drop by the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose to shine a little light on the issue.

SES: Ways SEMs Can Protect Intellectual Property

(Our on-scene WebProNews staff has passed along this latest news from SES San Jose [...]