December 2008
Presses stopped →
The Kansan City Kansan - the only paper covering Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas - is turning off its presses and going online.
I would say this is a forward-thinking act of innovation,…
Disagreeable →
Though by the reputation given me by others, I’m supposed to be disagreeable, twice today, I’ve disappointed big, old media people by not disagreeing enough.
Business Week wanted a debate over…
Links are good →
One of the best things Pro Publica does - besides reporting - is link to the best of what it calls accountability journalism because that helps support that reporting (take note, link-dumb,…
What makes recommender systems work? →
Why can we predict tastes? There are several possible explanations:
Intrinsically, individuals have predictable tastes. To test this theory, we would need to isolate each individual. Collect their…
Freakomendation - ffwd →
ffwd is a site with a goal of doing for video what Last.fm and iLike do for music. ffwd uses collaborative filtering to create video channels that are customized for a user.
This week I…
Danny Sullivan on Microsoft's Live Search →
Danny Sullivan wrote up a version of a talk he gave at Microsoft in June 2008 in his recent post, “Tough Love for Microsoft Search”. Danny Sullivan is an insightful writer, long-time watcher of…
Consuming Consumerist →
At a Consumers Union event at Columbia a few weeks ago, Consumerist editor Ben Popken told about his site being for sale by Gawker Media and I delighted in putting CU on the spot, saying that they…
Grabbing attention or building a reputation? →
Daniel Tunkelang has been writing on the attention economy (here and here for example): everyone is fighting to have your attention, and you only have so much to offer.
Attention is easy to…
Considering consistency at Amazon →
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels posted an copy of his recent ACM Queue article, “Eventually Consistent - Revisited”. It is a nice overview of the trade-offs in large scale distributed databases and…
The risk of reporting →
Guardian editor Alan Risbridger (disclosure: I work for him) recounts at length an expensive libel action against the paper by giant retailer Tesco over highly complex reports that included errors…
Attention + Influence do not equal Authority →
In the dustup over whether it is a good idea to sort Twitter posts by authority - defined as the number of followers one has - John Naughton rises above the cloud to see a larger fallacy in the…
We never invent anything new, yet progress is... →
Practical innovation explains how per-capita wealth increased eightfold during the last century. Yet, we are constantly reminded that we never invent anything new:
Most movies are remake or…
iPhone reporting →
Jim MacMillan is a journalist who left a newspaper but now delights in experimenting with new ways to gather and share news - in this case, photos of a fire on his iPhone. We need more of that…
What Would Google Do? on a Fortune best list →
I’m delighted to say that What Would Google Do? is on Fortune’s list of the three best web books of 2008.
Jessi Hempel gives me a justified ding for name- (actually place-)…
What is literacy? →
It’s time for new definitions of literacy just as we need new definitions of media.
I’ve been talking with lots of people lately - academics, foundation and government folks - about the need for…
It’s not just an era; it’s a new world order →
Fred Wilson says what I’ve been thinking: That we’re in more than a financial crisis, we’re in a fundamental restructuring.
Clearly the economic downturn is the direct cause of most of these…
Parlez vous buzz? →
Selected Buzzmachine posts are now being translated into two languages: into French on Rue89 and into Spanish on 233Grados.com. I’m delighted but also distressed that I can’t understand the…
Post paper →
News agents (aka newsstands) in Australia are thinking about their future post-newspapers.
My (short) activity report for 2008 →
I heard on radio today that the Christmas break should be used to review the past year, and decide where you want to go. Good idea!
What did I do?
I published the Lemur Bitmap Index C++…
Pardon Martha →
I just saw Martha Stewart showing off the pottery creche she made while in prison. Cool on her.
It made me think that with all the news of presidential pardons, Martha should get one. While she…
My low-tech research tools →
I carry a pocketbook and a pen everywhere. At night, my pocketbook is by my bed. All creative workers should carry notebooks.
Organizing and collecting ideas are different tasks. My pocketbook is…
Endorsement →
I’m all for Larry Lessig’s view of the FCC - so much that I’d like to see him nominated as the chairman who dismantles it. Vint Cerf agrees.
No hope →
After a hopeful post, time for the dark side. There’s so much darkness just today:
* The New York Times Company’s results are just awful: Ad revenues in the news group down 21.8%. Ad revenue for…
Hope →
After a yo-yo of hope and no hope below, now we move to the only discussion that really matters: What to do about it. Edward Roussel, head of digital at the Telegraph in London, writes an inspired…
The Music Explaura Video →
Over the holiday break, I like to do a bit of recreational programming … this year I shall be working on the Music Explaura. This is a rich internet application that will allow you to explore your…
Hope →
Loved this tweet from Business Week’s Doug MacMillan to his boss, John Byrne: “@JOHNABYRNE thanks for pointing me to @digidave (David Cohn). Doing that story made me more optimistic about our…
What's your musical-visual IQ? →
Here’s an interesting logic test to see how well you can relate music to abstract shapes and sensors.
Here are my scores:
Links for 2008 12 23 →
Enterprise 2.0 - A new Age of Aquarius? - SlideShare
(tags: web2.0, enterprise2.0, slideshare, presentation, twit)
Your message for Barack Obama | World news |…
Links for 2008 12 23 →
Enterprise 2.0 - A new Age of Aquarius? - SlideShare
(tags: web2.0, enterprise2.0, slideshare, presentation, twit)
Your message for Barack Obama | World news |…
Links for 2008 12 23 →
Enterprise 2.0 - A new Age of Aquarius? - SlideShare
(tags: web2.0, enterprise2.0, slideshare, presentation, twit)
Your message for Barack Obama | World news |…
Links for 2008 12 23 →
Enterprise 2.0 - A new Age of Aquarius? - SlideShare
(tags: web2.0, enterprise2.0, slideshare, presentation, twit)
Your message for Barack Obama | World news |…
Networks grow →
Just got a press release announcing another newspaper network starting: The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun will share content. Smart. (Link later.)
A danger to journalism →
The more I think about it, the angrier I get at Gatehouse for its dangerous and hypocritical crusade against links.
Links are the bloodstream of the web, carrying its oxygen. Links are how…
Where do presidents and prime ministers go to... →
In his most recent essay, After the credentials, Paul Graham tells us that in South Korea where “college entrance exams determine 70 to 80 percent of a person’s future.” Fortunately, the Americans…
When did Gatehouse become clueless? →
Gatehouse has been a smart if small - and getting smaller (stock=$0.04-$0.05; down 99.05% in a year; market cap=$2.1 million) - local media company. It is, for example, going into competitors’…
Freakomendation: AS/400 and Dementia →
Here’s another Freakomendation from Amazon. Since you purchased The Starter Kit for the IBM iSeries and AS/400 - Amazon recommends Reducing stress-related behaviors in Persons with Dementia. I’ve…
What Would Google Do? →
What Would Google Do? is a month away. I know you’re not counting the days, but I am.
Here’s its web home, where you can preorder the book (thanks in advance) from Amazon,
The Data is In - Guitar Hero and Music Discovery →
Nielsen SoundScan is reporting data about artists who have released songs on its “Guitar Hero” platform. Guitar Hero track sales rise by an average of 3X after the release on Guitar Hero….
LA Times followup →
Russ Stanton, editor of the LA Times, sent email following up on questions I had confirming the much-discussed report below that its web revenue is now sufficient to meet its entire editorial…
Downbeat →
As research, I’ve been following a GoogleNews search for “newspapers” and this weekend alone was revealing as I heard a chorus of newspaper people singing in harmony but in a minor key: defensive,…
Tomorrow belongs to them →
As I was writing my first book, What Would Google Do?, I thought I knew what my second would be - about the profound changes in culture, worldview, attitude, aptitude, impact of young people today,…
An ecology of accuracy →
John Naughton’s Observer column this morning recounts the shitstorm the Wall Street Journal brought on itself with its innacurate and ignorant story on Google and content cashing (v. net…
Eyewitness news, indeed →
Henry Blodget points to another milestone for Twitter: a passenger tweets a plane crash (after getting out, one hopes) — including a consumer relations moment (Continental won’t give the…
Parsing CSV files is CPU bound: a C++ test case... →
I am continuing my fun saga to determine whether parsing CSV files is CPU bound or I/O bound. Recall that I posted some C++ code and reported that it took 96 seconds of process time to parse a…
Can the LA Times turn off its presses? →
David Westphal reports an important and historic crossing of the Rubicon for a major newspaper, recounting a discussion with LA Times editor Russ Stanton at USC: “Stanton said the Times’ Web site…
Can they hear him now? →
Nick Kristof uses Twitter to ask readers in China whether they can see what he writes at the Times because the Times reports that China is blocking it.
Crowdsourcing the Lizard People →
As a die-hard political junkie, I’ve been looking for something to
fill the void left by an abnormally tidy presidential race. Luckily I
live in Minnesota, and get minute-by-minute updates about…
Parsing CSV files is CPU bound: a C++ test case... →
In a recent blog post, I said that parsing simple CSV files could be CPU bound. By parsing, I mean reading the data on disk and copying it into an array. I also strip the field values of…
Links for 2008 12 19 →
Facebook | Statistics
Statistics
General Growth * More than 140 million active users * More than half of Facebook users are outside of college * The fastest growing demographic is those…
Links for 2008 12 19 →
Facebook | Statistics
Statistics
General Growth * More than 140 million active users * More than half of Facebook users are outside of college * The fastest growing demographic is those…