The massive global recall of batteries made by Sony Corp. widened Wednesday as Japanese electronics maker Fujitsu Ltd. said it is recalling 287,000 laptop batteries that are at risk of overheating or catching fire.
Isn't it interesting that one of the few laptop makers not to issue a recall over Sony batteries is Sony itself?
Bush's former No. 2 guy on for the faith-based initiatives wakes up to the fact that GOP is playing religious conservatives for suckers. He's written a book about it, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, which comes out Monday.
While I oppose much of what the Religious Right is demanding -- teacher-led prayer in schools, the teaching of creationism as science and government funding for religious programs, to name a few -- I'm thrilled to see someone finally realizing that the the group's devotion to the party, and some of the anti-Christian values it represents, is misplaced loyalty.
From a report by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann:
According to Kuo, Karl Rove's office referred to evangelical leaders as 'the nuts.'
Kuo says, 'National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous,' 'out of control,' and just plain 'goofy.' "
So how does the Bush White House keep 'the nuts' turning out at the polls?
One way, regular conference calls with groups led by Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and radio hosts like Michael Reagan.
Kuo says, "Participants were asked to talk to their people about whatever issue was pending. Advice was solicited [but] that advice rarely went much further than the conference call. [T]he true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy."
They do get some things from the Bush White House, like the National Day of Prayer, “another one of the eye-rolling Christian events,” Kuo says.
And “passes to be in the crowd greeting the president when he arrived on Air Force One or tickets for a speech he was giving in their hometown. Little trinkets like cufflinks or pens or pads of paper were passed out like business cards. Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were. Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.”
Source: Crooks and Liars
The Internet billionaire, who made a fortune selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo during the Internet bubble, has launched a journalism venture called Sharesleuth. The site aims to root out corruption among public companies.
In a magazine interview, he explains what's wrong with mainstream business journalism:
Despite the fact that most newspapers and media are making strong profits, they have become slaves to earnings per share and trying to grow them worse than Internet companies were to page-views, users, and revenue in the late 1990s. They are not looking to create the best newspaper or media companies; they are looking to get their stock prices up. I know this is a generalization, but I can’t think of a large media company it doesn’t apply to. You have companies financial-engineering with tracking stocks, stock splits, buybacks, dividends, debt, acquisitions. You never hear anyone anymore saying “We are investing to become the best because our readers/viewers/listeners want the best possible content.” It’s shocking to me that the CEOs haven’t said, “Stock price be damned, we are making money and increasing shareholder equity by being the best at what we do.” Right now everyone is so afraid of new media they may lose the foundation of their core competencies. It’s happening in media, in movies, in theaters, in sports, and when I see it, I see an opportunity and try to act on it if it’s interesting to me.
Source: Los Angeles CityBeat
My favorite: "Fire any reporter or editor who refuses to learn how to use the Web to its greatest advantage, or to experiment with what works on Web vs. what works in print."
Source: Poynter Online - Forums
Interesting piece on Slate about the return of long-form print journalism: books.
Whoever said long stories put off readers hasn't scanned the New York Times best-seller list lately. Even though newspapers and magazines have crammed their pages with Iraq reporting, readers seem insatiable on the topic. The current Times list features four heavily reported and lengthy books about the Iraq adventure: Hubris, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn; Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks; State of Denial, by Bob Woodward; and Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
Source: Slate Magazine
I finally got my voucher yesterday from the Microsoft-California Class Action Settlement, one of the little-remembered upshots of the software giant's landmark federal antitrust case five years ago (or 10, if you count when it all started). I filled out my claim almost two years ago and had completely forgotten about it.
California alleged Microsoft used its monopoly power to squash potential rivals, and that lack of competition meant consumers -- especially in California, apparently -- wound up paying higher prices they they would have in a more freewheeling market.
Personally, I overpaid exactly $98, just enough to buy the Logitech MX Revolution -- the slickest, sleekest mouse in the world. I really like it, even though it's "revolutionary" new scroll wheel makes middle-clicks a little tricky.
My only complaints: I wish the "doc-flip" button had the option of acting as an "alt-tab" key combo instead of forcing users to run Logitech's add-on software. And I wish I could map the "instant search" button to mimic a key-mouseclick combo (so I could use it with Answers.com's 1-Click popups).
Does this make me a geek?
BrassTacks Design's Alan Jacobson offers some excellent and thought-provoking advice to newspapers hoping to survive the Internet age.
1. Get real about the Internet
2. Tie journalists' pay to circulation
3. Ignore your loyal readers
4. Stop running news stories
5. Feed the cash cow
6. Drop the price
7. Solve the online revenue riddle
8. Promote as if success depends upon it
9. Join hands and sing Kumbaya
His design firm is partly responsible for the inverse-L craze that's so popular with the kids these days -- a layout I don't particularly like -- but you have to give the company credit for slapping some reality into publishers' heads. The Internet is fundamentally changing the business and pushing newspapers to more radical changes than they've been willing to make so far.
As Jacobson puts it:
The Internet is not evolutionary like the telegraph, telephone, radio or television – it's revolutionary like Gutenberg's movable type, because it provides everyone with a powerful publishing technology. It's not merely a new way to publish – it's the democratization of publishing. Freedom of the press no longer belongs to those who own one.
Furthermore, the Internet allows virtually everyone to publish (i.e. HTML, myspace, blogs, etc.), search (database) and communicate (email) – three killer apps in one. Nuthin' else comes close.
The job prospects for scribes were pretty bleak after Gutenberg. Our future could be just as bleak unless we act quickly and decisively.
His most controversial advice is to "stop running news stories," at least in print. Instead, he argues, breaking stories should go to the Web, and context and analysis should appear in print.
He has a point. But there's nothing print can do context-wise that's not online, too (see Slate, which excels at these types of stories). And frankly, analysis is cheap (see just about every cable TV news program on the air).
There are a couple of things newspaper companies can do better than the Matt Drudges and Digg.coms. (Besides actual journalism, that is. Lost in all the hubbub is the fact that few bloggers actually report news. They gather, link to and comment on the news -- something that should be exploited, not feared.)
In print, newspapers still do a far better job with graphics and photos. Newspapers should use them more. I don't mean just running things bigger. My fiance recently did a graphic explaining the case of a years-ago local murder. A co-worker of hers mentioned that the graphic did such a good job telling the story that he didn't need to read the reporter's text.
And nobody covers local news like the local newspaper, whether online or in print. Newsies often moan about cutting overseas bureaus and a trend toward deemphasizing national and international news.
I say good riddance. The cuts leaves more room for local news. Local newspapers need to shake off the mindset that they're the sole source of news for local readership. That might have been true before 1994 or so. But today, national and international news is a mere click away at The New York Times, Washington Post and BBC -- which do a far better job at it anyway.
No, these notions aren't ground-breaking. The real challenge will be figuring out how to make money from online advertising. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for that one.
Now here's a real-life example of what Christianity is supposed to look like.
Dozens of Amish neighbors came out Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.
...
About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish.
I don't think I would have been able to do the same.
Source: Yahoo! News
