The Taste Blog

CUNY is streaming my opening lecture & discussion with the incoming interactive journalism class at 2p ET today:

Bitmap indexes are used by search engines (such as Apache Lucene), they are available in DBMSes such as Oracle and PostgreSQL. They are used in column stores such as the Open Source engines …

I could not have not explained better! ;)

From Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority.

Tocqueville argues that there is little toleration of difference of opinion in democratic societies.

“I know of no country in which, speaking…

In today’s Daily News, David Hinckley and Talkers’ Michael Harrison speculate that when Howard Stern’s Sirius XM contract is up, he could use the internet to start his own broadcasting company.

…

Last night, I watched a great talk by Dan Pink—author of several self-help books. He made a compelling point and he cited research papers. I went and read these research papers and I had great…

The newspaper industry should be sobered by Martin Langeveld’s calculations, based on the Newspaper Association of America’s misplaced bragging about Nielsen internet data, that only about a…

Many funding agencies and some universities require researchers to publish their articles as open access. That is, research articles must be available to all, freely. The main argument in…

Currently, I am finishing off House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. I am fascinated by Reynolds’ universe. Let me quote the beginning of the book:

I was born in a house with a million rooms, built…

Line by line, newspapers’ businesses are falling apart as they shrink and become less efficient for advertisers against the competition and reach of online. Consider:

* Coupon giant Valassis …

The Associated Press is refusing to sign for credentials under the conditions put on control of game coverage by the SEC. OK, I think what the SEC is doing is silly, too, especially now that every…

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has a very interesting presentation, “Our Freedom & Responsibility Culture”, with some thought-provoking ideas on how to run a company.

Some excerpts:

Imagine if every…

On the Media’s Bob Garfield interviewed me about the CUNY New Business Models for News Project.

I made one error: the new news organization’s editorial staff after three…