The Taste Blog

I have a new post up at blog@CACM, “Frequent releases change software engineering”, on why software companies should consider deploying software much more frequently than they usually do.

Here is…

As I prepare to go under the robot on Monday, I’ve found that the process includes drugstore embarrassments. They’ve only just begun.

It starts with Viagra. As I’ve explained, a man’s plumbing…

Compare these two columns about Twitter: one by Mike DeArmond, a sports hack in Kansas City, and one by Roger Cohen in The New York Times. They are each frustrated that Twitter doesn’t fit into…

Google has an image problem – not a PR problem (that is, not with the public) but a press problem (with whining old media people). Google is trying hard – too hard, perhaps – not to argue with the…

Data has natural layouts:

• text is written from the first to the last word,
• database tables are written one row at a time,
• Google presents results one document at a time,
• the early recommender…

Peter Day, one of the best radio interviewers I know and the very best in business coverage, talks about media mayhem this week and I got a chance to discuss the New Business Models for News Project…

Too many research papers in Computer Science are nonsense: they convey no worthy message. Yet, they pass a Turing test of sort: at a glance, they are indistinguishable from interesting research…

In newspapers’ game of revenue roulette, there’s a lot of talk lately about their trying to create membership plans. The New York Times and the Guardian, to name two, reportedly have visions of tote…

I was growling at my iPhone on the train this morning as I read a prominently promoted New York Times story about the rumored Chelsea Clinton wedding that didn’t happen. Sixth graph:

The…

Paul Graham gives a list of attributes characterizing start-ups. It strikes me that many of these attributes could describe research projects as well:

1. Good research projects fail. If there is…

PLoS One is a new peer-reviewed journal (2006) with many interesting features:

• The board includes many respected Computer Scientists: Ananth Grama, Johan Bollen, Josh C. Bongard, Robert…

At the Aspen Institute FOCAS event, where we presented our CUNY New Business Models for News, there came to be an unspoken debate – that is, an idea thrown out but never really engaged – about…

Like priests looking for someone to sacrifice, Alan Mutter, Steve Buttry, Howard Owens, and Steve Yelvington have been on the lookout for the sin that led newspapers astray. For Mutter, it’s…