BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

June 30, 2002

The Winona/Martha T-shirt collection at a store near you
: First, Winona wore a Free Winona T-shirt on the cover of W.
Now there is a Free Martha T-shirt. [via Relapsed Catholic]

LINK | Comments (0)

The Winona/Martha T-shirt collection at a store near you
: First, Winona wore a Free Winona T-shirt on the cover of W.
Now there is a Free Martha T-shirt. [via Relapsed Catholic]

LINK | Comments (0)

June 29, 2002

Why I am no longer a Presbyterian
: I left the Presbyterian Church five years ago and I am happier than ever that I did.
Yesterday, the NY Times had a story about a group of Presbyterian ministers being sued in the denomination's ecclesiastical court for allegedy violating the Presbyterian policy against ordaining gays to the ministry or church office.
Evil, disgusting bigots.
Here's my tale:
I first left the church way back in 1968 when our minister preached against the Vietnam War and received death threats against him and his family from his own congregation. He left the ministry. I left the church.
Decades passed. I had children. I decided they deserved the same right to reject what I had rejected and so I went searching for churches.
We went to a local Presbyterian church. I knew I was a round peg in a square hole when I gave an adult class in TV -- I was a TV critic then -- and said I liked Cheers and was attacked by church ladies. Why? Because it has sex on it. Well, so does life, you shriveled prunes! I knew I didn't fit in when one of the ministers had people coming up to the front of the church to witness like Baptists; Presbyterians usually do not wear their faith on their bumpers like that.
But I knew I had to leave when the ruling body of the congregation eagerly signed -- in secret -- a morally repugnant letter that came out of Princeton Seminary condemning gays in the ministry, pouring fire on a fight that has been raging in the denomination for more than a decade.
How dare they sit in judgment over others? How dare they decide who is and is not good enough to be a minister? Would they do the same to blacks? Well, actually, they would; this church tries to hide the fact that it hosted KKK meetings -- in New Jersey, mind you -- way back when. These were the same sorts of people who tried to keep women out of the ministry.
Now it so happens that my sister is a Presbyterian minister. I'm proud of her and her vocation. She fights the fight in the church against this discrimination. She loses but keeps fighting. I support her in that.
But I refuse to raise my children in this atmosphere of hate. Raising them in the Presbyterian Church would be like raising them in the KKK or the Nazi Party. And no, I'm not exaggerating for effect. A church that breeds hate is a most hateful institution.
So I told the minister that he and his cohorts were a bunch of bigots and quit.
We went to another church but it got mired in politics when a new minister who did not fit in was fired. We quit again.
Now I go to a small, open-minded Congregational church.
That story in the Times only reminded me of my disgust and anger.
The Catholics aren't the only church in trouble these days.

Speaking of fascists
: The Guardian reports that the FBI spied on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor because she was allegedly shtupping and passing secrets to Joachim von Ribbentrop:

The damning dossier - released for the first time by the intelligence agency - shows that the main reason why the Americans thought the abdication of Edward VIII had taken place in 1936 was because the duchess fervently supported the Nazi regime and this was totally unacceptable to the then Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. The official view has always been that he abdicated to marry the person he loved but could not stay on the throne because she was a divorcee.
The papers show that the FBI was told by a minor German royal that Wallis Simpson was having an affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was then German ambassador to Britain, while she was seeing the Duke of Windsor....
The papers also contain reports from a party in Paris that the duchess told guests that the duke was impotent and she was the only person who could satisfy his sexual desires.
The documents fuel the long-running controversy over allegations that the disloyal pair secretly admired fascism and that he was lined up to return to the throne if Hitler had conquered Britain.

Speaking of corruption
: The Observer gets to the core of the corruption in American business:

This is not just a case of companies fudging a billion here or there, as President Bush said in his folksy statement on Friday, and hoping nobody notices, a problem, as he characterises it, of individual ethics rather than systemic deformation. Rather, this is where America's business culture has led, legitimised by the conservative ideological barrage now a generation old which has transformed American public discourse. Everything should and must be pro-market, pro-business and pro-shareholder, a policy platform lubricated by colossal infusions of corporate cash into America's money-dominated political system.

The Observer blames much of this on the South.
Come to think of it, the Presbyterian Church was ruined when it merged with its Southern half. Hmmm.

Speaking of rich dolts
: Can you believe Michael Bloomberg saying that investors are as much to blame as crooked CEOs for the capitalist crisis into which we are now sinking and fast? He said:

"People who were buying stocks in the stock market at multiples that never made any sense should look at themselves in the mirror. They're as responsible, I think, as those who actually committed the crimes of misstating earnings and fudging the numbers."

Dick. As if these investors could know that these CEOs were lying to the tunes of billions of frigging dollars and their accountants were covering up for them. Dick.

LINK | Comments (0)

Speaking of fascists
: The Guardian reports that the FBI spied on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor because she was allegedly shtupping and passing secrets to Joachim von Ribbentrop:

The damning dossier - released for the first time by the intelligence agency - shows that the main reason why the Americans thought the abdication of Edward VIII had taken place in 1936 was because the duchess fervently supported the Nazi regime and this was totally unacceptable to the then Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. The official view has always been that he abdicated to marry the person he loved but could not stay on the throne because she was a divorcee.
The papers show that the FBI was told by a minor German royal that Wallis Simpson was having an affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was then German ambassador to Britain, while she was seeing the Duke of Windsor....
The papers also contain reports from a party in Paris that the duchess told guests that the duke was impotent and she was the only person who could satisfy his sexual desires.
The documents fuel the long-running controversy over allegations that the disloyal pair secretly admired fascism and that he was lined up to return to the throne if Hitler had conquered Britain.

Speaking of corruption
: The Observer gets to the core of the corruption in American business:

This is not just a case of companies fudging a billion here or there, as President Bush said in his folksy statement on Friday, and hoping nobody notices, a problem, as he characterises it, of individual ethics rather than systemic deformation. Rather, this is where America's business culture has led, legitimised by the conservative ideological barrage now a generation old which has transformed American public discourse. Everything should and must be pro-market, pro-business and pro-shareholder, a policy platform lubricated by colossal infusions of corporate cash into America's money-dominated political system.

The Observer blames much of this on the South.
Come to think of it, the Presbyterian Church was ruined when it merged with its Southern half. Hmmm.

Speaking of rich dolts
: Can you believe Michael Bloomberg saying that investors are as much to blame as crooked CEOs for the capitalist crisis into which we are now sinking and fast? He said:

"People who were buying stocks in the stock market at multiples that never made any sense should look at themselves in the mirror. They're as responsible, I think, as those who actually committed the crimes of misstating earnings and fudging the numbers."

Dick. As if these investors could know that these CEOs were lying to the tunes of billions of frigging dollars and their accountants were covering up for them. Dick.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 28, 2002

Fly me
: More reasons why I am very glad I have not flown since September 11: Lileks on being grounded.

Just fix it, bozos
: Harvey Pitt, head of the SEC, appeared on FoxNews yesterday saying just what he should not say. He wasted the time saying that he didn't cause this Enron-Anderson-Worldcom-Imclone-Qwest mess; he whined that he inherited it; he said it didn't happen on his watch.
Bozo.
We don't give a damn, Harvey. All we want you to do is FIX IT! Stop with the frigging fingerpointing and get off your fat ass and FIX IT!
It's easy: Just read the last issue of Fortune and follow their simple seven steps to FIX IT!
Mark my words: The economy is going to sink fast (see the depressing Denton). And when we analyze why George Bush couldn't win a second term it will be because he didn't FIX IT!
You have two wars now, George: You have to get rid of bin Laden and the crooked CEOs (and accountants and analysis) who are all ruining our consumer confidence, investor confidence, international confidence, and wiping out the last of my F.U. money. You have to FIX IT!

The new Yiddish
: Howard Stern this morning played tape of an awards show with hip-hop stars saying things I could not understand (of course, I'm not supposed to; I'm so whitebread, I am devoid of nutritional value). Every day, this is becoming more and more a language in its own right -- a descendant of English just as Yiddish is mostly an offshoot of German -- but still, a new language. Where is the dictionary? Where are the language classes?

Why spam will never work
: Having tired of trying to make a certain part of me bigger and bigger and bigger, my spam has now shifted its focus. It is offering me bigger breasts. No thanks. No mansiere here.

Video claustrophobia
: A trend: The fight for every pixel on a video screen -- whether that's a computer monitor or a TV set -- is getting out of hand.
Every web site has bigger ads that weren't big enough and so they have ads that cover everything for as long as they can get away with it. Hey, we gotta make a buck.
But the same thing is happening on TV. FoxNews covers the bottom of its sceen with logos, tickers, clocks, summaries of what the person on the screen just said, and anything else they can think of. It's getting so you can't see the person on the screen; TV is turning itself into a web page. And the trend is set to explode; expect to see tickers everywhere. TV Remote reports that the AP is now offering tickers to TV stations.
Things are moving so much on the screens I see I'm getting dizzy.

In the land of the networked, the networker is king
: Nick Denton brought together a great mix of fascinating people last night, a blog brain trust.
Afterwards, it occurred to me that a blog is a bit like a good party: It is selective; you decide to who to link to just like you decide who to drink with. And a good blogger is a good and generous host, like Denton.
It was refreshing to talk about an exciting new business again with Scott Heifermann of and about the meaning of community with Clay Shirky and about new technology I barely understand with the legendary Doc Searls and about brains with Steven Johnson (Plastic, Feed, Emergence) -- who really should be blogging -- instead of what online people usually talk about when they get together and drink: how tough it is to make this thing into a business. It inspires new thinking (instead of drunken depression).
Also was delighted to finally meet or remeet Matthew Yglesias, Anil Dash, Megan McArdle, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Rick Bruner, David Gallagher, Cameron Marlow, Om Malik, Elizabeth Spiers, the very gracious host John Johnson of Eyebeam, and others whose links I can't find now. Also always great to see Amy Langfield and John Hiler.

Tomato, tomahto, rotten in any case
: Allan Connery answers my question:

I've always thought of it as ebb it- dah, with the stress on the first syllable.
For example, recall Porky Pig's farewell at the end of his cartoons:
"EBITDA, EBITDA, that's all, folks."

LINK | Comments (0)

Fly me
: More reasons why I am very glad I have not flown since September 11: Lileks on being grounded.

Tomato, tomahto, rotten in any case
: Allan Connery answers my question:

I've always thought of it as ebb it- dah, with the stress on the first syllable.
For example, recall Porky Pig's farewell at the end of his cartoons:
"EBITDA, EBITDA, that's all, folks."

LINK | Comments (0)

June 27, 2002

Salon gasps
: Another sound of the death rattle from Salon. From it's 10-K [via The End of Free]:

As of March 31, 2002, Salon's available cash resources were sufficient to meet working capital needs for approximately three to four months depending on revenues generated during the period. Salon's auditors have included a
paragraph in their report indicating that substantial doubt exists as to its ability to continue as a going concern because it has recurring operating losses and negative cash flows, and an accumulated deficit.

A year ago, its ad revenue was $7.5 million; in the fiscal year ending this March, that fell to $1.9 million and total revenue was $3.6 million. Loss: $11 million. Stock: 8 cents today. Market cap: $1.28 million (v. more than $5 million a year ago). Not looking good.

You say rotten tomato, I say rotten tomahtoh
: A trivial curiosity: What is the proper pronounciation of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and ammortization)? Back when I worked at Time Inc. when it became Time Warner and because of its crushing debt it pushed this measure of performance (as opposed to the old-fashioned PROFIT!), it was pronounced with a short "i" sound at the start (as in "hit) and the accent on that syllable: IH-bih-dah. A friend and colleage who used to work at Goldman (they oughta know) and a financial reporter on TV this morning put the accent on the second syllable and started with a long "e": ee-BID-dah. We're going to be hearing a lot abot this as companies that use EBITDA -- instead of PROFIT! -- are slammed on Wall Street, so I just want to know.

One nation, under Howard Stern...
: Howard Stern sides with the court on the pledge of allegiance ruling. He also says it's a nonissue; when he was a kid, he never paid attention to the pledge. Right on both counts.

Crime pays
: Just saw a new commercial for Mr. Deeds. They're not promoting Adam Sandler (small mercies). They're promoting Winona Ryder. She's in the news. Shoplifting must be hot; just look at what's happening on Wall Street.

LINK | Comments (0)

Salon gasps
: Another sound of the death rattle from Salon. From it's 10-K [via The End of Free]:

As of March 31, 2002, Salon's available cash resources were sufficient to meet working capital needs for approximately three to four months depending on revenues generated during the period. Salon's auditors have included a
paragraph in their report indicating that substantial doubt exists as to its ability to continue as a going concern because it has recurring operating losses and negative cash flows, and an accumulated deficit.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 26, 2002

Graduation
: I went to a high school graduation tonight (no, not my own).
I was surprised -- and perhaps I should not have been -- that every single speech by every single kid -- and there were lots of them speaking -- focused on 9.11, on the impact on their year and their lives and the country and the future.

: By the way, at the start of the ceremony, we said the pledge of allegience. Yes, I said it. Nobody was compelling me to and so I did.

I [select one: do/do not] pledge allegiance...
: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declared recitation of the pledge of allegiance in schools unconstitutional because of the words "under God."
I expect packs of conservative jackels to come out of their caves with fang bared on this one.
But I also expect that this is the true test of the libertarians out there: I can't see how they could agree with the government compelling anyone to pledge anything, eh?
When I was in school, in the Vietnam era, I was one of those obnoxious kids who refused to say it and I stand by that right now. The government at any level should not compel me to pledge anything, including God; that would be unAmerican. And I'm not libertarian.

Say it ain't so
: Matt Welch is taking a break.

Give me liberty or give me blog
: Two guys are studying the impact on top-down media of blogs and other such bottoms-up media. Their study is not out yet, but the preview looks interesting. The study comes from Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis; the preview from Dale Peskin:

Bowman and Willis are exploring a shift in thinking about the mainstream press that is not merely generational or technological, but societal. It considers how a civic-minded citizen-press, not unlike the one at the time of the American Revolution, may impact the set of journalistic values that have been in place in the United States for about 150 years. It examines the principle of the press as privileged, trusted, informed intermediary of the news, and whether it can endure in an interconnected world where individuals have inexpensive, frequently equal, sometimes advantageous access to news and its sources. It tests the notion of "journalist as expert" in an empowered society of specialists and a global, collective intelligence.

Do not think for a second that there will be no value to (a) real reporting and real facts and (b) credibility in the media future. They will stay valuable and their purveyors -- newspapers, magazines, broadcast news -- with them.
Still, these guys make a point from the other perspective, the perspective that matters -- especially online: from the perspective of the audience. I like the sound of "civic-minded citizen-press." Now we've been hearing about this press of the people for sometime and often, it has not been so high-fallutin'; it has been shrill or tacky or worse. But that was on usenet and forums and chats and personal web pages.
Blogs are different. They add the element of quality to the citizen press. As I said to a reporter who called me on this topic the other day, blogs are edited products. And blogs and their links live within a system of self-selection in which the cream rises, quality wins. The best blogs get linked to and get traffic; the worst ones done.
And though real reporting, real facts, and real credibility still have value, this bottoms-up press also adds value; it selects and summarizes and links to and packages and adds perspective to all that real news; it saves us time and it lets us here another voice, the voice of the people. It is the beginning of a citzen press.

More mallaise
: I went to techxny (formerly PC Expo) -- a hardware show -- in New York today. Beyond sad. Below depressing. The show was way smaller than it used to be -- a third of its former self. The attendance was down. Most disturbing: There was no innovation, no development. There was no new there.
Our economy needs help.

LINK | Comments (0)

: By the way, at the start of the ceremony, we said the pledge of allegience. Yes, I said it. Nobody was compelling me to and so I did.

Say it ain't so
: Matt Welch is taking a break.

Bowman and Willis are exploring a shift in thinking about the mainstream press that is not merely generational or technological, but societal. It considers how a civic-minded citizen-press, not unlike the one at the time of the American Revolution, may impact the set of journalistic values that have been in place in the United States for about 150 years. It examines the principle of the press as privileged, trusted, informed intermediary of the news, and whether it can endure in an interconnected world where individuals have inexpensive, frequently equal, sometimes advantageous access to news and its sources. It tests the notion of "journalist as expert" in an empowered society of specialists and a global, collective intelligence.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 25, 2002

Salad
: The crisis in confidence in American business management only gets worse.
Now Worldcom says it has uncovered massive fraud: costs that should have counted as operating expenses -- coming out of the current P&L -- were instead counted as capital expenditures, which can be depreciated in the future. Thus the bottom line was inflated by $3.8 billion over five quarters.
As a result, Worldcom is expected to declare bankruptcy.
Worldcom runs most of the Internet.
Meanwhile, Martha Stewart kept trying to change the subject when she was quizzed about her stock trading scandal on CBS this morning. "I want to focus on my salad," she snipped as she snipped her lettuce.
And the stock market tanked. Again.
Enron... Anderson... Qwest... Adelphia... Global Crossing...
Meanwhile, consumer confidence tanked. Again.
And airlines went begging for federal loans while Amtrak damned near died.
And terrorism fears continue.
And war fears continue.
What a frigging mess.
I hate to give all you libertarians the heebie-jeebies but... It is time for some GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. We need regulation; the last few months are the proof that a completely unfettered marketplace will be up to no good. We need government reassurances that they will clean up business; we cannot rely on business to police itself. We need help.
Thanks to Osama bin Laden and a bunch of crooked CEOs, the American economy is sinking into the sewer.
Help!

Demos
: The wise Andrew Sullivan is running a survey to find out the demographics of his audience because sponsors want to know.
This would be a wise move for a larger group of bloggers to do. The more we know about you (aka us), the readers, the more we can make the case for our business.
Any volunteers?

LINK | Comments (0)

June 24, 2002

Please, folks, remember
: Amy Langfield remembers to remember what happened in September.

The blog blog
: Hylton Jolliffe of the wonderful Corante media and technology site now has a blog on blogging. I hope he can keep up this level of energy: very impressive.

The blog biz
: John Hiler, whose Microcontent News is also associated with Corante, writes that blogging software is disruptive technology -- disruptive to content management systems. He's onto something. Blogging software could not run lots of sites. But for certain sites, it does pretty amazing things: publishing current and archived content to multiple templates from multiple authors. It could do wonders for workflow and some other things I've been thinking about, too....

Blog blather
: Watch for another blogging story, this time from a certain great British magazine; was interviewed today.

Body v. brain
: I was feeling inferior tonight watching Dog Eat Dog, the latest alleged-reality show on NBC. The bodies were amazing; the strength impressive; just looking at them, I was reminded of all those times I was picked last for the team in school. But then we came to the final question that determined the winner of the night: Who served as both president and vice-president of the United States but was not elected to either office? The lady with the body as hard as the rocks in her head answers, after much thinking, "Colin Powell."
I no longer felt inferior.
But I did fear for the news business. Is anybody paying attention out there?

Ken Layne is a fool
: And so am I. He tells us why we should all be writing TV scripts.

LINK | Comments (0)

Please, folks, remember
: Amy Langfield remembers to remember what happened in September.

The blog blog
: Hylton Jolliffe of the wonderful Corante media and technology site now has a blog on blogging. I hope he can keep up this level of energy: very impressive.

Blog blather
: Watch for another blogging story, this time from a certain great British magazine; was interviewed today.

Ken Layne is a fool
: And so am I. He tells us why we should all be writing TV scripts.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 23, 2002

Rossi reads
: Rossi will read from her memoirs -- "Days of Awe," cooking for rescue workers at Ground Zero -- on WNYE FM (91.5) on July 3 at 6p.

Whew
: I am a centrist leaning toward left-liberal.
I know because I took the test. [via Jim Henley]
It's so good to know that there is no recessive libertarian gene in my DNA. Such a relief.

Is it me?
: Tonight on This Old House, the homeowners hugged their contractor, Tom Silva.
I sued mine.
Not fair.

Oy Oz
: Jewsweek has lots of good stories. This week: Jews in prison.

LINK | Comments (0)

Rossi reads
: Rossi will read from her memoirs -- "Days of Awe," cooking for rescue workers at Ground Zero -- on WNYE FM (91.5) on July 3 at 6p.

Whew
: I am a centrist leaning toward left-liberal.
I know because I took the test. [via Jim Henley]
It's so good to know that there is no recessive libertarian gene in my DNA. Such a relief.

Is it me?
: Tonight on This Old House, the homeowners hugged their contractor, Tom Silva.
I sued mine.
Not fair.

Oy Oz
: Jewsweek has lots of good stories. This week: Jews in prison.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 22, 2002

Journalism
: I picked up William L. Shirer's This is Berlin: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany -- a new, paperback edition -- today and as I leafed through it, I was surprised to witness a different form of journalism. In his daily radio reports from Berlin, Shirer told us what was happening there. He did not -- probably could not -- depend on lots of taped snippets and quotes; there were none of those obnoxious moments of atmospheric sound that you hear on NPR; there was just Shirer talking, observing, reporting. Take this from Sept. 2, 1939, two days after Germany invaded Poland and a day after England declared war on Germany:

Hello.
The world war is on. The newsboys have ceased shouting it. The radio, too, because now the radio is playing a stirring piece from the Fourth Symphony of Beethovan....
There is no excitement here in Berlin. There was, we are told, in 1914, and it was tremendous. No, there is no excitement here today, no hurrahs, no wild cheering, no throwing of flowers -- no war fever, no war hysteria.
But make no mistake, it is a far grimmer German people that we see here tonight than we saw last night or the day before. Until today, the people of this city had gone about their business pretty much as always. There were food cards and soap cards and all that, and you couldn't get any gasoline, and at night there was a complete blackout, but the military operations on the East seemed a bit far away -- two moonlit nights and not a single Polish plane arriving over Berlin to bring destruction....
Few here believed that Britain and France would move. They had been accomodating before. Munich was only a year ago....
But today it's different. A world war is different. The people here are also different. They're grim....
The papers tonight explain to their readers why it is advisable during air-riad alamrs to keep their windows not shut but open. The instructions are to open wide all your windows before you hurry to the cellar. It's explained that in case of an explosion, the glass in the windows is much more liable to fly in bits in all directions, and thus cause considerable damage, when the windows are left closed. It's also pointed out to those who might think that by leaving the windows open you, so to speak, invite the gas -- if there is gas -- to come into your house -- it's explained that gas is heavier than air, and therefore will not enter your house.

With every report, I feel as if I am in Berlin; I know what's happening there; I feel well-informed.
I wish we had more of this form of journalism today: The journalism of witness.

More Newspeak
: Driving today, I heard a Blockbuster commercial refer to "extended viewing fees."
That used to be called "late fees."
But they clearly know how much consumers hate those late fees and the draconian enforcement of them. They also clearly know that there's a new mail service out there with no late fees that is hurting them.
If you feel the need to invent a euphemism for the way you treat your customers -- if even you know it's a problem -- you may want to think about a new way to treat those customers.

Newspeak
: I'm slightly shocked at Glenn Reynolds for dabbling in his own anti-PC version of PC talk when talking about his weapons:

EUGENE VOLOKH notes yet another poll showing widespread (73%) support for the Justice Department's pro-individual-right position on the Second Amendment.

"Pro-individual-right position," Professor? How about "pro-gun"? Call a Glock a Glock, man.

Really
: Steve MacLaughlin says the latest trend on TV metastasizing: "Television execs seem to have fallen in love with a new program concept these days: Really real reality shows."

LINK | Comments (0)

Hello.
The world war is on. The newsboys have ceased shouting it. The radio, too, because now the radio is playing a stirring piece from the Fourth Symphony of Beethovan....
There is no excitement here in Berlin. There was, we are told, in 1914, and it was tremendous. No, there is no excitement here today, no hurrahs, no wild cheering, no throwing of flowers -- no war fever, no war hysteria.
But make no mistake, it is a far grimmer German people that we see here tonight than we saw last night or the day before. Until today, the people of this city had gone about their business pretty much as always. There were food cards and soap cards and all that, and you couldn't get any gasoline, and at night there was a complete blackout, but the military operations on the East seemed a bit far away -- two moonlit nights and not a single Polish plane arriving over Berlin to bring destruction....
Few here believed that Britain and France would move. They had been accomodating before. Munich was only a year ago....
But today it's different. A world war is different. The people here are also different. They're grim....
The papers tonight explain to their readers why it is advisable during air-riad alamrs to keep their windows not shut but open. The instructions are to open wide all your windows before you hurry to the cellar. It's explained that in case of an explosion, the glass in the windows is much more liable to fly in bits in all directions, and thus cause considerable damage, when the windows are left closed. It's also pointed out to those who might think that by leaving the windows open you, so to speak, invite the gas -- if there is gas -- to come into your house -- it's explained that gas is heavier than air, and therefore will not enter your house.

With every report, I feel as if I am in Berlin; I know what's happening there; I feel well-informed.
I wish we had more of this form of journalism today: The journalism of witness.

Newspeak
: I'm slightly shocked at Glenn Reynolds for dabbling in his own anti-PC version of PC talk when talking about his weapons:

EUGENE VOLOKH notes yet another poll showing widespread (73%) support for the Justice Department's pro-individual-right position on the Second Amendment.

"Pro-individual-right position," Professor? How about "pro-gun"? Call a Glock a Glock, man.

Really
: Steve MacLaughlin says the latest trend on TV metastasizing: "Television execs seem to have fallen in love with a new program concept these days: Really real reality shows."

LINK | Comments (0)

June 21, 2002

Identity theft
: Somebody somehow managed to steal my old Blogspot address -- crisis.blogspot.com -- and that matters, since I still get traffic forwarded from that address. Or I used to. Whoever did it has an abandoned Spanish site about an "identity crisis." I'm unamused. I tried to publish to it; I'm now told I can't -- even though it is myaddress.
Any suggestions?

LINK | Comments (0)

June 19, 2002

Books and blogs
: Hereabouts, we all have been spending a lot of pixels 'n' bits debating the impact weblogs have (or do not have) on news media: newspapers mainly, and also magazines and TV.

But I am coming to believe that weblogs and the Web may have a greater impact on books.

My own relationship to books has changed since September 11. Part of the reason for this is simply the impact of the day itself. Since then, I have not had much patience for self-indulgent writers showing off their petty emotions and precious observations (I've written before how I was reading Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections that day but I have not managed to crack it since; it's not the only one). I suppose I just don't have enough sympathy left over for made-up pain and fear when I saw too much real pain and fear that day.

Weblogs have also had an impact on my view of books. Since I started writing this weblog a week after 9.11 and since I became addicted to reading the weblogs of so many good writers in this fairly new medium, I find that I have less patience for authors in the oldest medium.
I get impatient with books that drag themselves out to justify book length and the book deal. Weblogs get to the point a lot faster. I read Christoper Locke's Gonzo Marketing in hardback and it was worth the price -- I've written about ideas it inspired, including the Weblog Foundation (more on that later) -- but the truth is that the book's real payoff came in a few pages at the end and the points made there just as easily could have been delivered on (for for all I know were delivered on) Locke's weblog.
I also get impatient with books that are stale by the time they come out, as so many have to be simply because the process of publishing -- pitch to agent to editor to committee to writing to editing to production to marketing to distribution -- takes so long (and costs so much) that freshness is impossible.
And oddly, books exhaust me more now. Maybe the Web shortened my attention span. But I don't think so. It's a value judgment -- about the value of my time. On many an evening, I look at a book I should read, a book I want to read; it seems to stare at me, shaming me like an unread pile of old New Yorkers. Then I look at my laptop. Book/blogs? Book/blogs? I weigh the choice and more often than not, blogs win.

Now don't get me wrong: I love books like a mistress; I obsessively wander bookstores to see what's new, to read random passages, to discover diamonds; I buy more books than I ever could read; I love Amazon so much that I bought the stock (and, more of a testament, never sold it); I stuff my house with books; I love books; I still want to write a dozen. I'm not suggesting or wishing for a second that books are doomed (God forbid!), only that change is on the way.
I have a different relationship to books now and I bet I'm not alone.

You see, weblogs and websites can one-up books in many ways.
First, when I find an author whose writing I like -- Rossi or Lileks or Layne or Pierce -- reading his or her weblog is like reading a book that never ends. What joy.
Reading their weblogs is also as close to watching an author create as you can get; can't get fresher than that.
Weblogs can be far more current than books.
They can have more variety; they can have more surprises.
They can even link to more about a topic when I want more.

Even books online -- dismissed as they've been -- have some advantages over books in print:
You can search online books. You don't kill trees. You don't have to lug them. They don't take up shelf space and thus don't have to fight for that space in stores and at home. They don't have shipping costs. And they can be up-to-the-minute -- witness John Dean's Deep Throat book released online -- really just an overlong weblog.
Though it's not online -- it's being published in a magazine in three parts -- witness, too, William Langewiesche's American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center published in the current Atlantic before it becomes a book this fall (see my post on this below). It is quite hot off the presses, much hotter than a book could be.
There seems to be a search on for better ways to make books. And maybe there needs to be. The book business has seen better days.
Books will be affected by all this. Authors will be. Publishers will be. Bookstores will be.
And libraries will be affected, too. Imagine what happens when their content becomes digital, when you don't need to go to the library, when the library -- any library, from anywhere -- can come to you.

One more thing: The Web is stealing the time, attention, and passion of lots of good writers who otherwise would be writing books. When I had coffee with Bill Quick, he said that writing his weblog presents him with an opportunity cost; he could be writing a book instead. A few months back, Layne was torturing himself writing his 'log when he should have been finishing his novel. There are a lot of talented people right now who are writing for the web instead of paper -- bound or glossy or pulp. That will have an impact on the craft.
But that impact will cut two ways. If I were editing anything in print today -- if I were the new editor of Rolling Stone, say -- I'd be finding new voices, new views, new ways to write among writers online, some of them listed over there on my right column. I'd steal them away from the Web.

Of course, there is one problem with all of this, the fatal flaw: Money. Real books don't pay much these days but the Web certainly pays less. John Dean sold his book online but it won't be a best seller. Bill Quick can tell you how to publish and get paid for an e-book on the Web but it won't pay the rent. Apart from Matt Drudge (trumpeting record traffic of five million page views a day now) and apart from Andrew Sullivan's Enron-like accounting of his weblog profit (is it really profitable if you pay yourself even minimum wage, Andrew?) you can't name a weblogger or online-journal writer who makes real money. I'm not suggesting that the Web and weblogs pose the slightest financial competition to books today.

No, but the Web and weblogs do compete for the attention of readers -- and writers -- and that will cause change, one way or another.

Noted.

Read this book
: I'm in the middle of reading William Langewiesche's American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center, a remarkable book that is being published first in three parts in The Atlantic; it will come out as a hardcover this fall.
Langewiesche was the only writer allowed complete access to the work at the World Trade Center after 9.11. He was a great choice for the privilege.
He is turning the story of what happened there into a compelling and informative drama.
In this first part, he concentrates on the engineers who worked there, whether poring over blueprints to figure out exactly what happened or mapping the dangerous caves of destruction under the pile the buildings became or grappling with the loss like so many others. They're engineers but they're human, too, he says, as he explores both the emotions and the science of the event in amazing detail.
I cannot recommend the piece highly enough. You can get it only in the magazine, not online -- but at least you're getting it before you would if you had to wait for the book.

I Want Media
: I've been remiss not linking to I Want Media by Patrick Phillips. It's a very-well-packaged, latter-day Romenesko but more complete and more business-oriented. I rely on it every day. This is an NPR kinda thing: I use it and so I should link to it; the least I can do.

LINK | Comments (0)

Books and blogs
: Hereabouts, we all have been spending a lot of pixels 'n' bits debating the impact weblogs have (or do not have) on news media: newspapers mainly, and also magazines and TV.

But I am coming to believe that weblogs and the Web may have a greater impact on books.

No, but the Web and weblogs do compete for the attention of readers -- and writers -- and that will cause change, one way or another.

Noted.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 18, 2002

Motherland Security
: I'm one of the apparently few who actually likes Homeland Security as a name for the department charged with protecting us.
But in the interest of (rare) open-mindedness I will propose an alternative.
Tonight, I was listening to Natalie Merchant's latest album -- Motherland -- and it came to be:
Motherland Security.
It works on so many levels: Don't mess wid my Muddah. Mother and apple pie. Mother nature. The feminist version of Fatherland.
And besides, I like the song:

Motherland, cradle me
Close my eyes,
Lullaby-me to sleep.
Keep me safe,
Lie with me.
Stay beside me,
Don't go,
Don't go...

Motherland Security II
:My colleague Joe Territo (the guy who turned me onto The Week, below) has a good suggestion regarding our Homeland/Motherland Security Department: The Washington Post says:

A possible complication in recruiting a secretary for the new department was revealed by a senior administration official, who said most of the department might be located outside the Washington area for security reasons.
The official said a new Homeland Security building could be located in Maryland or Virginia, well beyond the Beltway. "We think it's something that at least should be discussed," the official said. "We should be thinking differently about this department."

Joe's suggestion: "Maybe they should put it way beyond the Beltway, in lower Manhattan, providing a symbolic and economic boost and putting Rudy in charge."
Amen to that.
(I think this counts as Joe's first blog post; he'll join the cult soon.)

WiFi goes wide
: From my Fierce Wireless newsletter:

According to a report in today's BWCS, both Toshiba and IBM are said to be planning their own 802.11-based wireless networks. IBM is currently planning to launch a national Wi-Fi network and is gathering members for a consortium to work together on this plan. No word yet when IBM's network will make its debut.
Meanwhile, Toshiba is planning to launch a "public spaces initiative" in which the company will set up hotspots in malls, coffee shops, and possibly supermarkets. All of these will connect back to Toshiba's hosting site, effectively turning the company into an ISP. Toshiba plans to launch its Wi-Fi initiative on June 25 at PC Expo in New York.

Big doings. WiFi everywhere.... It's the next big thing. But we learned lately not to trust the next big thing until we see it....

Nonprofit
: Kuro5hin raises $10k in its tip jar in one day and decides to go nonprofit (via Metafilter).

: Speaking of nonprofit...
I owe you all an update on my thinking on the Weblog Foundation: coming soon. I'm not a nonprofit; I have to work and that has gotten in the way.

Join the club
: Another Rossi fan: Asparagirl.

TeeVee
: Marc Weisblott has started a blog reviewing fall TV pilots. It's cool. It's useful. It's blogging about something other than politics, which is good.
It's also deja view for me: I used to spend the end of summer getting and watching all those tapes and coming to grand conclusions about them for TV Guide and People before that.
I do miss those days.
But what I really miss are the days a few decades ago when the new season really meant something, when shows didn't die in a week, when we all watched and talked about the same stuff. That was fun. I'd still take the wealth of choice we have today over that -- and the new seasons that come year-round (what's more important: the new season on ABC or the new season of The Sopranos?) -- but still, those days were fun.

Deep Link
: Josh Marshall is ever-more convinced that Pat Buchanan is Deep Throat. I don't spend a lot of time thinking this one through. But the one thing I wonder is: If Buchanan is DT, why wouldn't he announce it and make political hay as the one honest man in American politics? Marshall argues that he can't because his fellow conservatives would consider him a traitor. But it's not as if they do him any favors anyway. And running on a third-party ticket is a worse form of betrayal to them. So why not put yourself on a pedestal and nya-nya all those below?

Science is amazing
: An artificial lung.

LINK | Comments (0)

Motherland, cradle me
Close my eyes,
Lullaby-me to sleep.
Keep me safe,
Lie with me.
Stay beside me,
Don't go,
Don't go...

A possible complication in recruiting a secretary for the new department was revealed by a senior administration official, who said most of the department might be located outside the Washington area for security reasons.
The official said a new Homeland Security building could be located in Maryland or Virginia, well beyond the Beltway. "We think it's something that at least should be discussed," the official said. "We should be thinking differently about this department."

WiFi goes wide
: From my Fierce Wireless newsletter:

According to a report in today's BWCS, both Toshiba and IBM are said to be planning their own 802.11-based wireless networks. IBM is currently planning to launch a national Wi-Fi network and is gathering members for a consortium to work together on this plan. No word yet when IBM's network will make its debut.
Meanwhile, Toshiba is planning to launch a "public spaces initiative" in which the company will set up hotspots in malls, coffee shops, and possibly supermarkets. All of these will connect back to Toshiba's hosting site, effectively turning the company into an ISP. Toshiba plans to launch its Wi-Fi initiative on June 25 at PC Expo in New York.

Big doings. WiFi everywhere.... It's the next big thing. But we learned lately not to trust the next big thing until we see it....

Nonprofit
: Kuro5hin raises $10k in its tip jar in one day and decides to go nonprofit (via Metafilter).

: Speaking of nonprofit...
I owe you all an update on my thinking on the Weblog Foundation: coming soon. I'm not a nonprofit; I have to work and that has gotten in the way.

Join the club
: Another Rossi fan: Asparagirl.

Science is amazing
: An artificial lung.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 16, 2002

Why I love The Week
: The Week is a magazine born of the Web era.
It is a weblog on paper, a brilliant weblog at that. The only problem is, paper doesn't come with links.
For me, the appeal of The Week is the same as that of weblogs: These people read the news, all the news, from all over the world, so I don't have to. They find the best. They discover the things I didn't discover. They give it to me in quick, witty, pithy bits. They know I'm busy. They also know I'm smart.

This is not like the magazines that came before it. Time and Newsweek stopped summarizing the news decades ago; now they thirst to break news and when they don't, they turn current events into news for dummies, so well pasturized and homogenized and smoothed out that it might as well be frozen yogurt (vanilla). Reader's Digest is the magazine our grandparents read because they didn't like to read.
On the other hand, The Week, like the Web, recognizes that there is a tremendous wealth of information out there that we just don't have the time (though we do have the intelligence and need) to absorb. So it helps us by finding the best reports and not only summarizing them but also quoting them; it doesn't try to be smooth like Time and put everything in its voice and under the umbrella of its authority; it repackages the best sources in media and relies on their authority. This, I believe, is a new form of news packaging inspired by the Web and we'll see more of it. The Week is just leading the way.

I am little surprised I'm saying all this. When my colleague Joe said he was dying to see this magazine before it was launched, I rolled my eyes; the thing sounded cheesey: news lite. But I respect Joe and so I gave The Week a chance and soon became an addict.
It's useful and informative, provocative and entertaining.
Felix Dennis, the publisher, says it is designed to give you "all you need to know about everything that matters" and do it in an hour and 10 minutes a week. What's amazing is that it succeeds.

I start each week reading the editor's note; I can't say that about any other editor's note (and I used to have to write them). This one is only two graphs long, about as long as a good blog post. Short is good. That's what I said when I started Entertainment Weekly: It's harder and smarter to write short. And every week, The Week Editor William Falk shows it.
Next I read the magazine's one-page briefing -- its backgrounder -- on a major story of each week. Sometimes, I miss the beginning of a big story and then I'm too embarrassed to ask about what I missed and newspapers too often don't fill me in. The Week takes a topic like Kashmir and explains how everybody got in this pickle concisely and smartly and after reading this one well-packaged page, I'm up to speed. It's a fine service.
Then I read summaries of other major stories with important reporting and commentary from papers around the world.
Next: On three pages, the magazine gives us short squibs on the major stories in countries around the world.
Then I turn to the best columns, letters to the editor, editorial, and editorial cartoons.
I read the best of gossip: "It must be true... I read it in the tabloid."
I read summaries of current reporting on business, science, health, and sports. I read short features on travel, food, and shopping. I read summaries of reviews of books, plays, movies, and music.
And I always lust after pictures of posh homes for sale around the world ($3.995 million for a nice joint in McLean, Va.).

The Week does all this and more in just 40 pages (only six of them ads).
And it does all this with a tiny staff, the size of which should be the envy of every magazine executive in the country. The masthead of The Week is a marvel of efficiency.

My only criticisms: The magazine is near-impossible to find on newsstands. The design is too British (this is a spin-off of the British publication) and might put off American readers. And it might as well not have a web site. I fear these things limit its growth.

I'm writing all this because I've seen that some bloggers are curious about The Week and others haven't even seen it.
So go looking for it. It is a magazine a blogger should like.

LINK | Comments (0)

I'm writing all this because I've seen that some bloggers are curious about The Week and others haven't even seen it.
So go looking for it. It is a magazine a blogger should like.

LINK | Comments (0)

Homeland Defense defense
: Glenn Reynolds may not like "Homeland Security" as a moniker but, like me, he defends it:

I'm certainly among the large number who regard it as creepy. But perhaps it's a good thing: given the ineffective-yet-intrusive nature of the domestic-security approach to date, why give it a popular name? One that sounds creepy and slightly unAmerican may, in fact, be perfectly appropriate.

LINK | Comments (0)

Homeland Defense defense
: Glenn Reynolds may not like "Homeland Security" as a moniker but, like me, he defends it:

I'm certainly among the large number who regard it as creepy. But perhaps it's a good thing: given the ineffective-yet-intrusive nature of the domestic-security approach to date, why give it a popular name? One that sounds creepy and slightly unAmerican may, in fact, be perfectly appropriate.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 15, 2002

Face time
: Nick Denton has created a compelling gallery of bloggers.
It's just like radio: You always want to know what the face behind the voice looks like.
Ditto weblogs: I always wonder what they look like. Now, I know.

I just have to say it
: I enjoy Richard Bennett. We should all be half as opinionated.

Coopt
: Oliver Willis argues that the Democrats should become the antiterror party.

Cool is still cool
: All hail Pyra/Blogger. It is Fortune's coolest media company of 2002.

Nothing destroys productivity like blogs, the frequently updated online diaries that have exploded in the past year. Blogs, short for Web logs, run from the personal (dating life in St. Louis) to the political (views on Arafat) to the arcane (diseased bees in Virginia Beach). The company behind the trend is Pyra, a minuscule operation in San Francisco that runs Blogger.com, the most popular tool for hosting and posting blogs, with almost 600,000 registered users. Pyra's CEO, Evan Williams, 30, talked to Fortune from his apartment-cum-office in San Francisco....
Q: Where do you see Pyra in five years?
A: I have a hell of a problem thinking five years out. The whole reason that I started a company was to build cool s--t that matters. I'd like to be a player in how the Web is evolving.

Ev should be in Hollywood. I've never known anyone (this side of Denton) who can get such great publicity. If only publicity were money.
But give Pyra credit: It is amazing for an Internet company today to be (a) alive and (b) growing. That is cool.

: I can't resist a bit of proud-uncle bragging. In the entire Internet go days, I successfully touted three investments and I'm happy to say that they are all still alive and doing well: Pyra, Moreover, and Cassiopeia. Whew.

LINK | Comments (0)

I just have to say it
: I enjoy Richard Bennett. We should all be half as opinionated.

Coopt
: Oliver Willis argues that the Democrats should become the antiterror party.

Cool is still cool
: All hail Pyra/Blogger. It is Fortune's coolest media company of 2002.

Nothing destroys productivity like blogs, the frequently updated online diaries that have exploded in the past year. Blogs, short for Web logs, run from the personal (dating life in St. Louis) to the political (views on Arafat) to the arcane (diseased bees in Virginia Beach). The company behind the trend is Pyra, a minuscule operation in San Francisco that runs Blogger.com, the most popular tool for hosting and posting blogs, with almost 600,000 registered users. Pyra's CEO, Evan Williams, 30, talked to Fortune from his apartment-cum-office in San Francisco....
Q: Where do you see Pyra in five years?
A: I have a hell of a problem thinking five years out. The whole reason that I started a company was to build cool s--t that matters. I'd like to be a player in how the Web is evolving.

LINK | Comments (0)

June 14, 2002

Homeland Security it is
: I disagree with Mickey Kaus and half of Blogville already. Kaus doesn't like the moniker "Homeland Security." I do. He argues that "homeland" is too Teutonic -- too much like the Germans' "Heimat." What, so anything German is now Nazi and verboten? No hamburgers for you! (This must be the first time that PC anti-defamation finger-wagging has been done on behalf of Germans.)
I like "homeland" -- vs. the predictable "domestic" -- precisely because it conjurs up the idea of our nation, our Heimat, our land, our America. It has a patriotic undertone. That is precisely what the Department of Homeland Security should be about: protecting America.
And as for fears that "security" is too Big Brotherish: Get used to it.

Rudy!
: So Peggy Noonan joins the campaign I started months ago: Putting Rudy Guliani in charge of Homeland Security. This bandwagon's getting crowded.

Grrr
: It amazes me that people who irritate you think that you then will want to do business with them.
If a spammer offered me the greatest product in the world for the lowest price, I wouldn't trust them for a second, wouldn't ever buy from them.
The latest popunder trick to irritate us: The ad moves all over your screen so you can't catch up with it to close the damned thing.

Not-so-fast food
: The Guardian reports that McDonald's and Coke are about to spend billions to convince us Americans to eat healthy (in an attempt, they say avoid cigarette lawsuits).
Makes a person feel sorry for the corporate giants. What silliness. What we eat is clearly our choice. Fast food is not an addiction (at worst, it is a bad habit -- one I used to have). If you choose to eat burgers every day, you shouldn't be able to blame Ronald McD for that. But, of course, someone will. If you get fat, its your fault, not theirs. Take a little responsibility, people!
So now we have companies forced to advertise not to use their products too much. What has capitalism come to?

: I do love fast food. Used to eat it all the time. But then I got older. I got married. I saw my father-in-law in the cardiac unit. I try to eat well. But I still love fast food. And my kids eat it. So now I try to find the healthy fast food.
I'm pissed at Burger King (the chicken nugget house of choice in my house) for they ruined their grilled chicken sandwich. The BK Broiler was great but they morphed it into the Chicken Whopper; the chicken is no longer marinated; it's dull; its chewier; it's just not as good.
I loved Taco Bell's new grilled stuffed burrito (chicken).
And I'm very excited by McDonald's new menu item: The grilled chicken flatbread sandwich (peppery grilled chicken, grilled onions -- a very nice touch, pepper-jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, on a nice slab of flatbread). I'll take two, please.

: Monkeys drinking Coke is an entirely different matter.

Bloghaus
: Doc is in Munich, blogging away. He notes how wi-fi in public places makes computing social (an observation I saw elsewhere in recent days -- thought it was Denton but can't find it now):

having a wi-fi hot spot in a social space (the library on the boat, the lobby in the hotel) has social effects. Guests aren't in their rooms, jacked to the Net in private. They're working, corresponding and chewing fat, all at once. The social protocols are interesting, too. Sometimes people collaborate ("look up 'munich bierhaus' on Google and click on the third link..."). Sometimes they pound their keyboards in private. Others respect both the private and public behaviors.

What he blogs
: Kottke on the dreaded also-ran browsers that drive us web-site creators completely batty when trying to do anything new or nice for our users:

I agree, Netscape 4 has to go. Please get it out of my sight. It sucks because it's not a browser as much as it's a dirty bomb lobbed over the fence in the heat of the browser wars. If Netscape 4 were a car, they would have recalled it years ago.
But I'm not sure that Mozilla is any better. Mozilla is a toy built by developers for developers...a return to the days of Mosaic when some geeks in Illinois built browsers for other geeks around the world. Developers slobber over things like support for standards and XUL (which are cool), but end users have different needs and priorities.
Yeah, remember them? The end users? The ones that you're building the software for? They don't care about your damn cross-platform interoperability...they want fast, they want features to help them browse the Web, they want an interface that was designed by someone who knows about interface design, and they want a good user experience.

Your friendly neighborhood blogger
: Arnold Kling at Corante's Bottom Line asks -- with some help from John Hiler and Dave Winer -- whether blogging is really just the decentralization (or, as we'd say in the '70s, devolution) of news and media. That is, at the start of the last century, every town had its own local paper and we didn't have big broadcasting conglomerates; does blogging cut all our media centralization back down to size so, thanks to bloggers, you can find the best story that interests you regardless of the source or publisher or distributor?
This is a corollary to the decades-old debate over whether the mass audience is dead. I used to be part of that debate when I was a TV critic, witnessing the growth of choice thanks to the remote control and cable and the VCR (and now satellites and the Internet, too). Never again, it was said then, would all of America ask the next morning, "Who shot J.R.?" because we now had far more choice; some of us would be watching MTV or CNN or TBS instead. True. But the mass audience did not die; it only shrank; it only became harder to reach; it changed the economics of entertainment media.
So Kling is wise to add an important question to Hiler and Winer's speculation: The economic question: "Somebody has to figure out how to get money to flow to the reporter in Pakistan, the musician, and probably to the more useful recommendation services or weblogs." Right, and nobody has figured it out, least of all me. It's what Bill Quick and I talked about over coffee the other day; it's what we all talk about.
It might sound cool to say that bloggers replace publishers but that misses the fact that there is no money in blogging and the only way there will be money is if its consumers pay or if it becomes big enough -- yes, mass enough -- for advertisers to pay attention to it and if these advertisers have easy ways -- that is, through convenient conglomerates -- to market through it.
It's not a brave new world yet.

LINK | Comments (0)

Rudy!
: So Peggy Noonan joins the campaign I started months ago: Putting Rudy Guliani in charge of Homeland Security. This bandwagon's getting crowded.

: Monkeys drinking Coke is an entirely different matter.

having a wi-fi hot spot in a social space (the library on the boat, the lobby in the hotel) has social effects. Guests aren't in their rooms, jacked to the Net in private. They're working, corresponding and chewing fat, all at once. The social protocols are interesting, too. Sometimes people collaborate ("look up 'munich bierhaus' on Google and click on the third link..."). Sometimes they pound their keyboards in private. Others respect both the private and public behaviors.

What he blogs
: Kottke on the dreaded also-ran browsers that drive us web-site creators completely batty when trying to do anything new or nice for our users:

I agree, Netscape 4 has to go. Please get it out of my sight. It sucks because it's not a browser as much as it's a dirty bomb lobbed over the fence in the heat of the browser wars. If Netscape 4 were a car, they would have recalled it years ago.
But I'm not sure that Mozilla is any better. Mozilla is a toy built by developers for developers...a return to the days of Mosaic when some geeks in Illinois built browsers for other geeks around the world. Developers slobber over things like support for standards and XUL (which are cool), but end users have different needs and priorities.
Yeah, remember them? The end users? The ones that you're building the software for? They don't care about your damn cross-platform interoperability...they want fast, they want features to help them browse the Web, they want an interface that was designed by someone who knows about interface design, and they want a good user experience.

LINK |