February 2008
61 posts
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Is Twitter Down? →
Bonus: clicking the “Yes” takes you to an Amazon listing for Scalable Internet Architectures. Ouch.
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The Power of the Printed-on-Demand Word →
Khoi Vihn has a book (sorta):
Digital evangelists: if you have any doubt about the convincing power of print, then order yourself a book of your own making over at Lulu.com — remember to put your name prominently on the cover — and show it around to your friends.
It looks very snazzy, and makes me wonder if we’ll see a rise of micro-publishers — small companies that take a...
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What's new at Starbucks: 3 changes →
Better espresso! Whee!
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Abilene Christian University is announcing a pilot... →
I sure missed out on this. Maybe I can transfer?
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A disruptive Web presence in four steps
Here’s a brief business plan I’ve been kicking around for a few days. Comments?
Pick that cool neighborhood with all the those bars and coffee shops — the one that you and your friends love to hang out in. This is the area of town where you see new stores opening and old shops closing and wonder what the story is. Find four other people1 who will commit to report on this part of town with...
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No Country for Long Movies →
Is you serious? asked a teenage girl, addressing the screen as the credits rolled after the final monologue. “Best picture, my ass,” added another youth. Half the theater started to laugh.
A good followup to an earlier post.
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How Grainy Cameraphone Pics Bankrupted Photography →
It seems every old media industry is getting disrupted by leaner, rougher, New Media competitors these days.
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Addressing the didn't-see-'em factor →
This little nugget of insanity has been making the rounds on the Web lately.
These are some of the best movies that the filmmaking culture is turning out now. Every year there are at least 20 or 25 films that are somewhere between excellent, very good or good enough to watch and think about later. If regular people in Boston and Saskatchewan are living such insulated and cut-off lives that...
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Obama stiffs, stifles national press →
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Bright Lights, Big Conference →
Here’s a great article about how the publishing industry has changed, becoming increasingly professionalized.
Writers, young and old, might still come to New York, but today the city is a place you visit to have lunch with an agent, talk to a publisher, attend a conference. You don’t need to live in Greenwich Village and drink at the White Horse to be a writer. Instead, if...
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Blogger, Sans Pajamas, Rakes Muck and a Prize →
Of the many landmarks along a journalist’s career, two are among those that stand out: winning an award and making the government back down. Last week, Joshua Micah Marshall achieved both.
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Here's to un-asked-for gains
So, a story of mine that I didn’t really like (and that, as I recall, my editor didn’t really like either) just won a 2nd place sports feature award from the Kentucky Press Association.
Best part? I found out about it when my mother E-mailed me. Thanks, mom.
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Whoa. Now the list of people I’m following is sorted by the order in which I began following people instead of what I assume was the order in which they joined Tumblr. For some reason it kind of disturbs me.
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Don't Worry, WikiLeaks →
Yesterday a federal judge ordered WikiLeaks off the internet.
Nice try.
What’s that quote? “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”?
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Can we finally bury the "bloggers only comment,... →
Now that Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo political blog has won a George Polk Award for legal reporting, can we please officially bury the tired old nonsense about blogging not being real journalism?
That’s fantastic news.
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Reinventing Journalism On The Web: Links As News,... →
News orgs need to play to the strengths of their medium; i.e. make hypertext documents that act like hypertext documents.
Just as the reported quote is an essential element of journalism, on the web the “reported link” must become an essential element of journalism.
There is a fear that once readers leave the news org’s site they won’t come back. That’s valid, I suppose,...
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About EveryBlock's maps →
I’m impressed with the level of care put into every aspect of this site.
Scientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline →
Sounds wonderful! But, ah, thanks to that first law of thermodynamics, it’s going to take a lot of energy to make energy-rich gasoline out of air. The solution? Nuclear power!
Even with those improvements, providing the energy to produce gasoline on a commercial scale — say, 750,000 gallons a day — would require a dedicated power plant, preferably a nuclear one, the scientists say.
...
Playground Blues →
Probably the best personal Web site I have ever seen ever.
Wikileaks Shut Down by U.S. Court →
Wikileaks was started with the intention of allowing whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, “an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. ” Of course, that only works if the site is reachable.
This is sad. Could it just be moved outside the United States?
Today’s thought: I didn’t get a degree to be poor →
Ratings: Storytelling No Match For Flashy Effects... →
One of the eternal truths about humankind.
Guantánamo, Evil and Zany in Pop Culture →
Several recent portrayals of the gulag in pop culture, including this one:
The “Harold and Kumar” writer-director team, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, suggested in an interview that their script did not worry too much about Guantánamo’s actual details.
Mr. Schlossberg said their portrayal of Guantánamo involved darkness and dirt. They filmed at an abandoned prison in Shreveport, La.,...
“Anyway, Barak Obama really plagiarized the constitution, and I’m pretty...”
– Ashley
“The decline of Vaudeville had very little to do with the declining effectiveness...”
– Journalism is NOT the problem - discuss | Greenslade | Guardian Unlimited
The amount of corn it takes to produce 75 litres... →
Via johnbrissenden, via azspot.
Bailiffs soon will carry bright yellow Tasers →
But why stop there? Let’s give every American a Taser.
Social Bookmarking For Journalists: 101 →
Awesome. This is definitely something I need to get in on.
“If I built a news organization from the ground up it would look nothing like the...”
– The Journalism Iconoclast » Today’s thought: A totally different way of doing news
Using Twitter to deliver news: a few early... →
It’s ideal for publishing breaking news (it’s like a ticker that runs not just across your website but across your users’ screens too). It also seems to work well for regular round-ups, provided the headlines are re-written to reflect the nature of the update. Twitter users have no way of knowing at a glance that the story’s been updated if the headline looks the same as...
Mobile is the future of the Web and news →
The Web isn’t going to limited to computers anymore — as devices like the iPhone proliferate, it might even become a secondary way of accessing what is seen primarily as a medium for the phone/camera/tablet walkaround hybrid.
The personal computer isn’t going anywhere, but people are increasingly accessing the Internet and the Web via mobile devices like smartphones. The iPhone in...
Layoffs: 'NYT' Cutting 100 Newsroom Jobs This Year →
Ouch. Make it stop!
Gawker's Nick Denton on the State of Blogdom →
I Love You, but You Love Meat →
The NYT on the perils of relationships with those with restricted diets.
Vegans, who avoid eating not just animals but animal-derived products, take it further, shivering at the thought of kissing someone who has even sipped honey-sweetened tea.
ESPN Page 2 - Just how tough are NASCAR fans? →
A little taste of Southern hospitality.
A Primeval Tide of Toxins →
dailymeh:
Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This ‘rise of slime,’ as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.
And this was written in July, 2006.
That’s some pretty powerful writing.
“Newspaper video is no ego, no narration, real action, real stories, sometimes...”
– Twitter / Mindy McAdams
Stop sharing spreadsheets, start collecting... →
Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you’ll get the spreadsheet automatically.
This is sweet....
Yesterday →
Yet while the Republican outcomes yesterday were more lopsided, the rancor between the factions on that side of the aisle seems much more fierce. The GOP establishment — including talk radio moguls Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson — really dislikes McCain. Wall Street, Club for Growth type Republicans hate Huckabee. The sense I’ve gotten from the Democratic side is that while...
How an election should be covered →
I love the written word. I’m a writer myself, but some stories are just told better in on other formats. Elections are one of those stories.
Student leader apologizes for e-mail with Obama... →
The University of Kentucky’s student government association president has apologized for sending an e-mail that falsely accuses Illinois Sen. and presidential hopeful Barack Obama of being a radical Muslim.
Nonvoter guilt
I keep feeling vaguely guilty that I’m not voting today. Then I remember that Indiana isn’t part of Souper Tuesday. Still, I feel bad somehow.
Shield law for journalists: Will it protect... →
Hawaii’s legislature is currently considering a journalist shield law, one which contains no specific provisions regarding bloggers other New Media journalists.
The bills’ prospects in the Legislature are unclear. Lawmakers will have to clarify who qualifies as an authentic journalist, and they’ll also need to debate exactly which government bodies the news media are protected...
“WikiLeaks.org, a user-editable Web site that anonymously publishes sensitive...”
– CJR: Wikileaked onto A-10 (via friends)