Journeyman is actually a pretty good show

I didn't really like the first couple of episodes of this series about a San Francisco journalist/time traveler, but kept recording it for some reason. With a dearth of new programming on due to the writers strike, I finally got around to watching the shows piling up on my Windows Media Center. And you know what? Journeyman really grows on you.

Now I'm all caught up on the first half of the season and can't wait for the second half to begin. I hope it doesn't get canceled. It's one of the more sophisticated sci-fi shows I've seen on TV (one of the strengths of Battlestar Galactica) in a while -- and has been far better than season 2 of Heroes so far.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for sci-fi stories centered around journalists.

Update: Oops. Too late.

Vista SP1 release candidate

I went to the "install fair" at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus this weekend to get an early peek at the long-awaited service pack 1 for Vista. The event gave Microsoft engineers a chance to see how the install process goes on a variety of machines so they can tweak things before this week's public release. The entire install process took about three hours on my machine, but the folks at the event said many people there (including me) ran into a problem that caused a hiccup -- it should be fixed before the service pack goes public.

Unfortunately, I had to uninstall it, because it messed up the sleep function of my laptop. I don't know if this is because my 2710p's sleep feature is nonstandard or whether it's a bug in the Vista service pack, but I can't afford to have anything wrong with my laptop, so I'll just have to wait for the final release. I do plan to install the service pack beta on my home machine to see if it improves reliability. We'll see.

General update

Between my Flash class, apartment hunt and pregnancy (Andrea's pregnancy, actually), I haven't had much time to do any real writing. Today, I'm at a venture capital conference in Half Moon Bay between sessions. Anyway, here are a few odds 'n' ends:

• My iPaq 6915 died. Or more accurately, it stopped syncing to PCs through the USB connection -- which for my purposes, is the same thing. A repair and badly needed battery replacement looked like it was going to be $100 or so, and who knows what else was about to go wrong with it? So I replaced it with the AT&T Tilt, which was going for half price Thanksgiving Day weekend. I'll write more about it later, but it's a pretty nice phone -- powerful and 3-G network ready. My data plan went up another $20, but it connects at true broadband speeds, dulling the financial bite a bit. I can even share the Internet connection with my laptop over Bluetooth. So no more hunting around for Wi-Fi.
• Andrea has reached the 7-month mark of her pregnancy. She's starting to feel the physical discomfort of having another person inside her. The baby is very active, which is a good thing.
• Google Maps has added a "send to GPS" feature that lets users send a destination to their TomTom device. I haven't gotten it to work with my TomTom Navigator 6 software, though.
• And in other Google Maps news, the mobile version of the service added a feature that shows your approximate location without GPS. It triangulates your position using information from your phone carrier's cellular transmission towers. Kind of handy, but a little creepy, too.
• And this is a little old, but Microsoft's Live Search mobile application has added a feature that lets you use voice input. It works pretty well and comes very handy in certain situation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Holiday tip: There is no finer Thanksgiving Day desert than Coco's Harvest Pie. You can thank me later.

My Xbox is back

Better, stronger, louder. With a different serial number.

Microsoft must be sending already-refurbished consoles to replace newly broken units in rather than waiting to complete the actual repair. In any case, I'm glad to have a functional console back so quickly -- three weeks from the time the old one broke until the refurbished unit was on my doorstep. Just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend.

I can feel the heat coming out the back of the new unit, so it looks like the fix involved much better heat transfer out of the system.

The only downside is that -- because Xbox Live purchases are tied to the hardware as well as your user name -- I now have to be connected to the Internet to play my purchased arcade games, even though they're saved to my hard drive. I hope Microsoft is working on a way to transfer the licenses permanently to the new box.

Facebook test

Facebook test

My first Flash project is online

Here.

Forgive the silly "credits" button. I was about to turn this in when I realized I hadn't met all of the instructor's requirements, namely, a rotating object and a gradient fill.

Christmas-themed Ring of Death

Is this a brand-new kind of hardware failure for the Xbox 360 or a holiday decoration?

Happy Anniversary

Andrea and I have been married one year. Wow, time flies when you're in love.

I just felt an earthquake.

This one was scary.

All the neighbors (and me) just ran out of their houses, which I'm sure is not what we're supposed to do. But I think it's a natural reaction.

Details here.

Fun while it lasted

My Xbox 360 gave me the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" last night, the flashing red signal indicating a general hardware failure. I've heard estimates of fatal defects in up to a third of all Xbox's. From the anecdotal evidence I've run across, though, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the total was closer to two-thirds.

Anyway, my machine just fell out of its original warranty, but thanks to the warranty extension Microsoft announced last spring, I'll still get a free repair.

Unfortunately, this process will take about a month. This wouldn't be so bad if my Xbox didn't also serve as a media extender; in addition to no Halo 3, it also means no recorded Heroes, Smallville, ER, 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, etc. So what am I supposed to do in the meantime -- read or something?

Update: In related news, GameStop is reportedly scrapping its Xbox replacement plan.

Since when does an Osama story call for a "wacky" headline?

From the Washington Post's Web site today:

Do they have interns working at the copy desk or something?

A practical use for Photosynth

I've written separately about Microsoft Labs' Photosynth and Live Search Maps before, and now I can write about them at the same time. Microsoft apparently has incorporated the former into the later.

Using Photosynth's photo-transition technology, maps users can now scroll smoothly between separate high-resolution birds-eye photos. In addition to being very cool, the effect makes the birds-eye feature of Live Search Maps much easier to use.

Microsoft also improved the layout and user interface and upgraded its driving directions -- it will incorporate traffic into your route, for instance. And this might be just my impression, but the whole thing seems to have gotten a bit snappier.

I meant to write about this earlier, but I got to put Google Maps and Live Search Maps in a head-to-head competition a few weeks ago, on the morning of a traffic-clogging accident on the Dumbarton Bridge. Google showed the traffic flowing freely on the bridge; Microsoft correctly showed the bright red "standstill" line, along with a pop-up description of the accident.

So far it hasn't been enough to get me to switch away from Google Maps, but it's a step in that direction.

Bebel Gilberto is (or, was) Starbuck's song of the day

I have this album, but I haven't listened to it enough to form a strong opinion about it either way. I didn't think her last album was as good as the first, but that's probably because she didn't have the famed producer Cazuza as a collaborator.

Between Bebel and Ceu, someone at Starbucks seems to be really into Brazilian music.

Speaking of Ceu, she's coming to San Francisco on Nov. 3, which happens to be Andrea's and my first wedding anniversary. So we're going to the show. With the baby coming along, it'll probably be our last concert for a while.

Andrea's online graphic

Very cool.

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/graphics/7433/rocknroll_marathon.swf

Another glowing review of the 2710p

An excerpt from tablet enthusiast site jkOnTheRun:

This new model is a design marvel that rekindles the love of using a Tablet PC, and that's why I bought one.

. . .

It is not only a great Tablet PC but also a stellar thin and light notebook computer, something that other OEMs have attempted to do but none as successfully as this in my book.  The hardware components are a decent compromise for providing great battery life while still providing very good performance, even under the resource hog that is Vista.  HP has done a good job making sure that the entire package works as flawlessly with Vista as anything I have seen yet.  The thin and light design is stellar at providing a great OOBE and daily usage.

The 2710p vs. the x61

I feel a little more reassured now about my tablet PC purchase. The Houston Chronicle's tech guy reviewed the Lenovo x61 (the tablet I was considering for more than a year) and the HP 2710p head to head. Like me, he gave the 2710p the slight edge.

For me as a journalist, it really came down to two things: the 2710p's integrated microphone (for recording interviews) and the "night-light" feature, which illuminates the keyboard in dark rooms.

ASU in the New York Times

Guess what? ASU is crowded! And it's hard to find parking!

Stop the presses!

Busy, busy, busy

Posting will be a little lighter than usual over the next couple of weeks due o a confluence of events this week.

• Season premiere of Heroes.
• My discovery that Amazon.com is selling Battlestar Galactica season 3 downloads. Believe me, you won't find this (legally) anywhere else -- it's not even on DVD yet.
• My Flash animation course at the local community college (which despite being online, actually has deadlines).
• Halo 3, which assuming I've timed things right at GameFly, should be coming this week. To its credit, GameFly seems to have ordered many copies in anticipation of demand.

More news on the baby front: the chromosome tests came back today, and it's definitely a girl. Andrea, as you can probably imagine, is thrilled.

Newspapers should stop defining themselves as newspapers

News is about information, not the obsolete product it's printed on, says news consultant Vin Crosbie.

News organization that print news on wood pulp must stop defining themselves as 'newspapers' because that traditional definition intrinsically limits what they should do. Likewise, news organization that have always transmitted audio news clips on set schedules must stop defining themselves as 'news radio.' Etcetera.

...

However, the basic fact is that each is a news organization. The problem is they're internally organized to produce products that are becoming obsolete.

Obsolete? Yes, the likilihood is that consumers in the future won't want to receive a daily news report printed on wood pulp or even the online analogue of wood pulp (despite some video and animation added). Nor will consumers want to receive audio or video sent to them in a schedule or program line-up that they can't control or re-arrange. The era of the 'newspaper' in the United States, Canada, and many other countries, is over.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Times Select Is free; Times Reader is not

I'm probably one of about 12 people who care, but the New York Times' decision to make all of its Web content free doesn't extend to its software Reader, which I've written about before.

That's too bad, Reader is something I might have used, but its not something I'd actually pay for.

Question:

Is it wrong to play a game designed for kids just for the easy achievement points? Or just lame?

It's (probably) a girl!

Though we can't really be sure until the chromosome tests are complete, two sonograms on two continents seem to indicate that we're having a baby girl.

Everything looks good, and the baby looks healthy. And as you can see, she moves around in her sleep as much as I do.

 

P.S. After strolling through the "related videos" links, I see that sonogram videos could be considered their own subgenre on YouTube!

OneNote for Mac?

After a deluge of requests, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit is gauging users' interest in an OS X version of OneNote .

I didn't realize there were so many other fans of Microsoft's note-taking software out there. When I was considering getting a Mac, one of the things that kept me in the Windows camp was the thought of not being able to use OneNote natively (this was before Apple switched to Intel, making dual booting and robust virtualization possible). I completely agree with one of the comments on the page I linked to: OneNote is probably the single best piece of software Microsoft has ever produced.

Apparently, a lot of people like it as much as I do. This is quite a surprise, because it seems as though Microsoft barely promotes it. Most people I talk to have either never heard of it or think it's something you need a tablet PC to use. 

This Mac-love is even more surprising considering that the OS X version of Microsoft Word includes some of OneNote's main features, such as time-mapped audio recording.

Time To Re-Learn Cursive

finally got a new laptop computer, replacing my six-year-old

Sony Viao srx77p with HP's new 2710p convertible tablet. At about $1,900, it was pretty expensive for my budget (I've been saving up for more than a year), but I can safely say it is, by far, the finest laptop I have ever owned.

The purchase decision was a tight race between this and Lenovo's/IBM's ThinkPad x61s, also a convertible tablet. I was looking for an ultraportable tablet with a comfortable, full-sized keyboard and good battery life. Performance wasn't as much as a factor, though I wanted to get something that could handle Firefox, Word, Outlook and OneNote running simultaneously -- and still feel fast in a few years. And I knew I would need at least 2 gigabytes of memory to ensure Windows Vista ran smoothly.

I had read as many reviews as I could find. Most of the amateur/enthusiast sites were spot-on about the 2710p's strength and weaknesses. The least useful review, surprisingly, came from CNet, which slammed the 2710p for using a trackpoint-type cursor control -- something that barely warranted a mention in Cnet's "Editor's Choice" review of the Lenovo X60 (each was written by a different staffer).

Here's my quick-and-dirty summary judgement of the 2710p.

The good: The 2710p is light, sports a decent battery life and has a keyboard that rivals Lenovo's legendary feel. It also packs some handy features Lenovo lacks, such as built-in camera, integrated dual-array microphone (which means I can easily record in-personal interviews via OneNote) and a pop-out "night light" that illuminates the keyboard when it's dark -- this will come in very handy when I'm covering keynote speeches at tech conventions. And then there's the wow factor -- it looks stunning.

The bad, as well-documented in most of the online reviews:

• the power switch is hard to slide, as is the screen latch.
• There's no easy screen-rotation button accessible in both laptop and tablet modes (the screen rotates when you "transform' the machine from a laptop into a tablet and vice-versa, but if you shut it down in tablet mode and decide to fold it into laptop form when putting it away, it could boot up in the wrong orientation).
• The ambient light sensor, which saves battery power by ensuring that the screen is no brighter than it needs to be, is in the worst possible place. In tablet mode, most people will wind up placing their arm over the sensor when writing, constantly dimming the screen.
• The digitizer pen pops out too easily. It still takes force to pull the pen completely out of its holster, but I'm still worried about losing it.

Still, I'm pretty happy with my purchase. I'm not sure how the machine will stack up against Lenovo's famously tough machine in terms of durability, but the marketing material listed several features designed to put business users at ease: DuraKeys, chemically strengthened glass on the screen, and a motion sensor that parks the hard-drive head to protect the machine when it's dropped or jostled. The case is also made of a magnesium alloy, which is supposed to be pretty tough for its weight, and coated with something called DuraFinish to keep it looking newer longer. And did I mention how nice it looks?

Finally, about the cursive. I've been using the tablet feature, and the handwriting recognition is atrocious -- even after I spent an hour training it to learn my style. Maybe it's me, but no matter what I do, it just won't recognize my lower-case a's, lowercase d's and a few other stubborn letters.

But it reads my cursive script, which is quite messy, flawlessly. So I'm re-training myself to write in cursive. This is not as easy as it sounds. I know cursive is probably much more efficient, but for some reason, I've always preferred block letters, even after I became a newspaper reporter. (Thanks to the Internet, I now see I'm not the only one who feels this way).

Here's what's wrong with cursive: capital U's and V's, which are far too similar; the awkward capital T; the goofy-looking, three-humped lowercase m; and the stupidest cursive letter of all time -- the capital Q. Lowercase k's, meanwhile, have become the bane of my existence.

Wish me luck.

My (not-so-hot) photos:

Embattled Attorney General Resigns

This comes about six months too late, but at least it's finally happening.

I was struck by this detail of the news accounts:

A senior administration official said today that Gonzales, who was in Washington, had called the president in Crawford, Tex., on Friday to offer his resignation. The president rebuffed the offer, but said the two should talk face to face on Sunday.

Gonzales and his wife flew to Texas, and over lunch on Sunday the president accepted the resignation with regret, the official said.

I hope the reporters confirmed this narrative, because it sounds like pure fiction -- or at best, political theater. I'm betting that the resignation was part of a deal Bush made with Congress in exchange for expanding the the government's wiretapping powers a few weeks ago.

And I love this little gem:

On Saturday night, Gonzales was contacted by his press spokesman to ask how the department should respond to inquiries from reporters about rumors of his resignation, and Gonzales told the spokesman to deny the reports.

He couldn't resist one last lie.

Embattled Attorney General Resigns - New York Times

I'm having a baby!

Actually, Andrea is. But I helped!

Now that we've passed the crucial 12-week mark, we're entering our public beta phase.

10 AMAZING ways to get your article on Digg!!!!!

Remember the days when a journalist could just write a story and leave all the editing, publishing, promotion and distribution to other people on your newspaper staff? No longer.

In this crazy Web 2.0 world of ours, everyone is a one-man news operation. And if you want to get read, you've got to get dugg. So here are some helpful pointers on how to get noticed by Digg and other social bookmarking sites.

1. Break your article into a numbered list of easy-to-digest snippets. People love top-10 lists, how-to's and collections of Web sites, software, etc.

2. Hype Promote the article's contents (see headline above). Little words like "amazing," "unbelievable," "mind-blowing," etc., go a long way. And use at least five exclamation points in the headline (any combination will do; you can spread them throughout the headline or save them up for a big bang at the end). And don't forget to CAPITALIZE key words!

Bonus tip: Combinations of these techniques can be especially powerful. Trust me!! You'll get INCREDIBLE results!!!

3. The best predictor of future performance is past performance, right? So don't be afraid to repeat yourself or previous Digg posts. Most people have short attention spans and need to be reminded of things. If someone points out the dupe, argue that there might have been someone, somewhere in the universe who hasn't read it before and it therefore deserves to be a top-rated story.

4. Rumors -- no matter how ridiculous, poorly sourced, silly or illogical -- are fair game. And there's nothing wrong with making wildly speculative claims or draw overreaching conclusions about minor new developments. Accuracy is highly overrated.

5. Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose! Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose!Apple, Google, Digg, Kevin Rose!

6. Linux rules; Microsoft sucks. The sooner you get that through your head, the happier you'll be.

7. Make more friends. Or submit your own articles.

8. To draw in more readers be as vague as possible in the headline and the summary. Examples: "Something very INTERESTING is going on at Google!!!!!" and "What will those Japanese inventors think of NEXT!?!?!?!?!?!? The answer may surprise you..."

9. People like nice, round numbers. So if do don't have enough material, fill the list with something lame. Like this.

10. The best predictor of future performance is past performance, right? So don't be afraid to repeat yourself or previous Digg posts. Most people have short attention spans and need to be reminded of things. If someone points out the dupe, argue that there might have been someone, somewhere in the universe who hasn't read it before and it therefore deserves to be a top-rated story.

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Paint: Behind the Scenes

Too funny.

Google mobile

I noticed today that links to New York Times stories from Google's personalized mobile homepage go straight to the Times' mobile Web site rather than Google's "mobilized" version (where Google intercepts and reformats the regular site for mobile phone users).

I like this. As handy as Google's reformatting is for many sites, I'd rather see the true mobile version for sites that have one.

I know (semi)-famous people!

Andrea's first multimedia project appeared online today (she did all the 3-D stuff and helped with some of the other things).

And a friend's Web site, CostHelper.com, got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.

Kudos all around.

Live Search for Mobile

Microsoft has updated Live Search Mobile, a search and mapping application for Windows Mobile- and Java-equipped phones. The new version offers movie showtimes, better GPS support and the ability to cache previously viewed maps for faster performance.

It's a lot like Google Maps Mobile, though if forced to choose, I'd have to give a slight edge to Microsoft on this one. Though I prefer Google Maps on my PC -- it's the snappiest online mapping service by far -- I've always liked the way Microsoft/MSN/Live maps look. It's the closest thing I've seen to "real" paper maps. Now, I can get the maps I like in a service that's just as fast as Google's alternative.

Anyway, both are handy little applications to have on your phone.

Separately, Microsoft also updated its Live Search Web service for mobile phones. Among other things, the new version lists search results across multiple categories, much like Google's standard PC Web search. It's pretty handy -- I'm not sure why Google doesn't do the same thing its mobile searches.

Still, Google's mobile search gave me much better results in two quick tests.

On Google, a phone search for "7-11" listed nearby stores -- Microsoft gave me what looked like completely random results.

A Google search on "Harry Potter," meanwhile, gave me local showtimes for the movie, a couple of recent news stories, J.K. Rowling's official site, the official Harry Potter site, the Wikipedia entry and more. Microsoft gave me the Wikipedia entry, some photos (a nice touch, actually). It had a space for news stories and local results (showtimes, etc.) but they were empty -- despite knowing my home address. So Google was far more useful in both situations.

It seems Microsoft has a little more work to do.

The Future of Journalism, part 534

"Recovering Journalist"  Mark Potts notes the Wall Street Journal's precipitous revenue plunge, but worries more about the industry's lackluster and unimaginative response so far.

His ideas, paraphrased:

• Accept that the Web and mobile devices are your primary publishing platform, not the printing press. Even better, stop printing the newspaper altogether and move entirely to the Web.
• Get local. Very local.
• Embrace user-generated content and bring readers into the conversation.
• Give readers' social networking tools to help that them interact and flourish under your banner.
• Find ways to make your company essential to your advertisers' businesses by providing them with non-advertising services.

I don't quite agree with that last point, especially when he gets into some of the specifics he has in mind. But the rest of it is spot on.

 Meanwhile, Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 notes what he calls the "10% problem" newspapers face going online. 

What you find, with some modest rounding, is that print circulation is about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue is 10% of total ad revenue — the economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be.

In other words, it's not newspapers that are lagging in this technology transition -- it's advertisers.

Maybe the industry is trained to think that, for display ads, bigger is better. Many are resistant to newspapers publishing in a tabloid-sized format for the same reason -- they don't want to pay the same amount of money for smaller ads.

Maybe newspapers are fetching less for online ads just because that's all they're worth. With online ads, advertisers know exactly what they're getting for their money.

Maybe they're realizing that they've been overpaying for decades.

In any case, I hope my industry, to paraphrase of Jeff Jarvis, can survive long enough to solve this dilemma.

Two brands I love come together

I use both Answers.com and Dictionary.com (along with its sibling, Thesaurus.com) several times a day, so I take a keen interest in Answers.com's purchase of the company that publishes Dictionary.com.

The services overlap, but I've found Answers.com, with its handy 1-Click Answers tool, a fast way to look up stock symbols and company addresses. And Thesaurus.com is my synonym finder of choice, calling up more synonyms and related words than any online reference tool I've ever used.

I'm not sure what, if anything, the merger will change, but I'm happy to hear that both services will remain operational. I'd be especially happy if the company were to create a right-click popup thesaurus like the one it created for Answers.com.

Source: Download Squad

Journalism as a service

In a post about the fight at the L.A. Times about whether to run front-page ads, Jeff Jarvis makes an interesting point about journalism as a service vs. journalism as a product.

But what is the LA Times as a local brand and service — note: service vs. product — going to look like in five years and how is it going to get there? How can it get far more local than it is today? How can it build broader networks of people and content and advertising? How can it pay for all that development and experimentation? And how can it survive long enough to get there?

While the distinction may seem semantic, I think the industry's mistaken impression of itself underlies its fear and loathing of readers' migration online.

As a product, newspapers are doomed -- and their demise is coming a lot faster than many of us realize. But as a service, journalism and the journalism business have unprecedented opportunity. The sooner journalists start thinking of their business as a service, the better equipped they'll be for the changes ahead.

Source: BuzzMachine

Windows Media Center: not ready for prime time

When my ReplayTV 4040 finally gave up the ghost last fall, I thought very carefully about its replacement. I had three main options: 1) Buy a TiVo. 2) Pay someone on eBay for a new hard drive formatted and loaded with ReplayTV's proprietary software. 3) Get a Media Center PC (or upgrade my existing PC to handle TV recording).

I didn't like the TiVo option, because that would have meant shelling out for a monthly subscription fee, and feeling left at the mercy of TiVo, which can change its terms and features at will.

Getting a new hard drive for the old ReplayTV would have been a cheap option, especially since I had gotten the lifetime subscription option when I bought it in 2001. But I wasn't sure how much longer ReplayTV would stay in business. For all I knew, the only reason the device was still getting programming guide info was because someone forget to turn off a server somewhere.

So the Media Center PC option was looking more attractive. I liked the idea of being able to easily add on more capacity by adding standard hard drives and new features with software upgrades. And the programming guide info was free.

Still I had no intention in paying $2,000 or more for a decent-looking PC for the living room (my new wife was clear that she wouldn't tolerate an ugly PC tower next to the TV). Fortunately, I knew I could use the Xbox 360 I had received as a wedding present -- which was already connected to the TV and stereo system -- as an extender. In other words, the ugly tower PC would remain in the computer area, where it belonged, but record all my shows and play them through the TV.

Since I already had the Xbox 360 and could find cheap tuner cards for my Vista-ready PC (the Media Center software is now standard with Vista Home Premium and Ultimate), the economics looked good too.

I encountered a few hiccups along the way. Vista ran poorly on my old machine, so I had to upgrade the memory. But this is something I would have had to do anyway. And my first choice of tuner -- an external USB tuner with no hardware video encoder -- was, ahem, a learning experience.

But after some trial and error, I got everything working.

Six months later, I find the setup more and more frustrating. I don't know whether its a hardware issue, still-poor driver support from ATI (tuner) and Nvidia (graphics card) or Vista, but the setup is getting less reliable by the day.

Sometimes the PC crashes when the Xbox tries to connect. At other times, tuner failures mean a show never gets recorded at all. And then there's the all-in-one ehrecvr.exe hangs, which mean shows don't get recorded and already-recorded shows can't be played.

I understand that new operating systems need time to work the kinks out. But Vista has been publicly available for 18 months or so already, and my patience is wearing thin.

When it works, the Media Center setup is excellent. But it's just not reliable enough to recommend. And if a geek like me can't get it working reliably, I'd hate to see the average consumer try to use it.

Ah yeah!

It looks like Gears of War is getting a sequel of some kind and/or a PC version. Interesting.

If the PC rumor is true, it might be just what Microsoft needs to boost its "Games for Windows" initiative.

Advisory: Video contains violence and a swear word.

What the...?!

You may have noticed that things have changed a bit. For one, I've changed the name of my blog to "Kenny Dirt Jeans." I liked the old name, but it referred to something -- a TV cartoon -- that I don't own. I wanted something I could truly call my own. As to what it means, well, that's a long story.

I've also moved off of Tripod onto Blogspot. I had planned to do this before the Europe trip, but it proved to be a bit more complicated that I had anticipated.

Why fix what ain't broke? For an HTML newbie, Blogspot is a lot easier to use while offering most of the flexibility of my old do-it-yourself approach. Also, the ad-free version of Tripod costs $5 month and doesn't let you host your own ads; Blogspot is free and does.

I tried to keep the visible changes to a minimum, but I also used the move as an opportunity to tweak the look and feel a bit. I still have a bit of work to do in that department, but it should be easier now.

Anyway, welcome to the new site.

Who needs the Kwik-E-Mart?

Apparently, Mountain View, Calif., does. This 7-11 has been converted to the fictional Simpsons convenience store as part of a promotion for the upcoming movie.

Update: More Kwik-E-Mart photos (not mine) here.

Update 2: Even more.

The inevitable iPhone post

Actually, this post is about the ultimate reporter's tool, which I'm not quite convinced is the iPhone.

I've been thinking about this topic since last year, when I got the Hewlett-Packard iPaq 6915 smart phone. I do all kinds of journalism-related tasks with it, including getting directions (Via the built-in GPS), sending and receiving e-mail, surfing the Web (painfully) and recording interviews when I don't have access to my OneNote-equipped laptop. In a pinch, I could even write and file a short story with it. I've actually gotten pretty proficient on the tiny keyboard. (I'm writing this post with it from a park.)

Still, it's far from perfect. The camera isn't good enough for newspaper-ready photos (or Web site-ready, for that matter), and the mobile version of OneNote isn't nearly as useful as the full version. I've tried taking notes with it, and it wasn't pretty.

From what I've seen, the iPhone is even more flawed as a reporter's tool. But it got me thinking again about how close this ultimate device might be to reality and what it might mean for my industry. What will the newsroom of the future look like? And will everyone be a potential journalist?

I love upgrades

One of the things I love the most is when something I already use and like gets better. And that's what has happened with Google Maps and Plaxo.

Google Maps, which long ago passed by beloved Yahoo in the online mapping arena, added a new feature that lets users change the routes generated when asking for driving directions. This can be useful if you want to, say, avoid a particular area on your route or take a scenic detour.

It's a feature would often use in Microsoft Streets & Trips (can you tell I'm a map nut?), but now it's free. This is on top of the very cool "street view" feature the company recently launched.

Here's a demonstration from the Google folks:

Plaxo, meanwhile, just launched version 3.0 of the service that focuses much more on online calendars.

This is exactly the right move, I think. The 6-year-old company is best known for its address book synchronizer, an Outlook plug-in that automatically updates contact info changes of Plaxo subscribers in your address book. But most users didn't know that the plug-in was also a pretty easy way to synch your Outlook calendar, notes and tasks between different machines. Everything happened in the background -- no fuss, no muss.

The new version (which incorporates Plaxo's acquisition of HipCal last year) takes that several steps further. First, Plaxo beefed up its online calendar offerings, making it easier to access one's own schedule online and letting users publish free and busy times so other users can see it. Even cooler, Plaxo now lets users sync Outlook with Yahoo and Google's online calendars. Very Web 2.0 of them.

The new version is still in beta -- and it shows. In my tests, it took the service several hours to update Google Calendar after I made changes in Outlook and vice-versa. But if the company can getting working as advertised, it'll attract a lot of attention.

Heck, Google might even buy it.

Newspapers Should Embrace Online Aggregators

Amen. 

The problem that newspapers and other traditional media brands have is that they still see branding as a function of controlling the distribution channel, rather than branding each unit of content that must now live and survive on its own in a disaggregated online media ecosystem.

But the real missed opportunity for newspapers is in optimizing their content to convert user who find their way to newspaper content via search and other aggregators into subscribers and direct users of the brand. The New York Times, having learned from search master About.com, is using this approach with its Times Topics pages, which rank high in Google for generic terms and draw users in to the universe of NYT content.

Source: Publishing 2.0

Europe, consolidated

I merged the London and Paris photos into a single slideshow. If you'd rather browse individual photos or see larger versions, just click on any picture.

Courier-Journal reporter ejected from U of L game

For once, resistance to change isn't coming from a newspaper:

A Courier-Journal sports reporter had his media credential revoked and was ordered to leave the press box during the NCAA baseball super-regional yesterday because of what the NCAA alleged was a violation of its policies prohibiting live Internet updates from its championship events.

10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head

There is hope. Ryan Sholin, a  graduate journalism student at San Jose State University, spells out a few realities that somehow seem to elude most veteran news people. Here's a summary of his well-argued diatribe.

1. It’s not Google’s fault.
2. It’s not Craig’s fault.
3. Your major metro newspaper could probably use some staff cuts.
4. It’s time to stop handwringing and start training.
5. You don’t get to charge people for archives and you certainly don’t want to charge people for daily news content.
6. Reporters need to do more than write. The new world calls for a new skillset, and you and Mr. Notebook need to make some new friends, like Mr. Microphone and Mr. Point & Shoot.
7. Bloggers aren’t an uneducated lynch mob unconcerned by facts. They’re your readers and your neighbors and if you play your cards right, your sources and your community moderators. If you really play it right, bloggers are the leaders of your networked reporting projects. Get over the whole bloggers vs. journalists thing, which has been pretty much settled since long before you stopped calling it a “Web blog” in your stories.
8. You ignore new delivery systems at your own peril. RSS, SMS, iPhone, e-paper, Blackberry, widgets, podcasts, vlogs, Facebook, Twitter — these aren’t the competition, these are your new carriers.
9. J-schools can either play a critical role in training the next generation of journalists, or they can fade into irrelevancy. Teach multimedia, interactivity and data, or watch your students become frustrated and puzzled as they try to get jobs with five clips and a smile.
10. Okay, here comes the big one: THE GLASS IS HALF FULL.

I wish this were written by a major news executive instead, but at least some journalists seem to get it.

Paris is amazing

We finally got to the Eiffel Tower yesterday. Pictures don't do it justice; it's much bigger and far more imposing in person -- a stunning blend of engineering and art. Everyone should see this once in their life.

We've seen most of the other things you're "supposed" to see here, sights too numerous to mention. Today we're taking a day trip to Versailles, and tomorrow we'll spend most of the day at the Louvre. Friday, our last full day here, will give us a chance to relax and catch up on the little things we had planned to do duing the week but didn't get aound to.

Now we're in Paris!

We found an open Wi-Fi router to leech from, but we probably won't have time to post many pictures until we get back. And yes, we'll properly label all the pictures. Maybe I'll even put together a little slide show.

Photos!

Here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ken_brown/

We're here!

Here in London, that is.

Just a quick post from an Internet terminal at the hotel -- apparently, free Wi-Fi is a foreign concept here. I should be able to post a few photos tomorrow night.

Redefining “Christian” music

Interesting article mentioned on the site of some of my favorite conservatives:

CCM (formerly Contemporary Christian Music magazine) is going to start covering music on non-religious labels. Considering that some of the best Christian artists despise Christian music labels (take Sam "Leslie" Phillips as an example), this move should have happened years ago. As Phillips' husband, T-Bone Burnett, once put it: "You can sing about the Light, or you can sing about what you see because of the Light. I prefer the latter."

Anyway, from CCM:

“We’re going to start mixing indie and general market Christians such as The Fray, Mary J. Blige and Sufjan Stevens in with artists with traditional Christian label affiliation. Rather than define ‘Christian music’ just by its label or distribution, we’re now defining it as Christian worldview music. CCM Magazine has always taken its role as a leader seriously, and we believe this is the way of the future.”

Or as David Byrne would say, "Same as it ever was." Or at least "should have been."

Source: CCM, via Christian Realism

Journalism-is-doomed roundup

• Timothy J. McNulty on why local journalism can't be outsourced.
  
  Unlike most of my colleagues, I think PasedenaNow's experiment is actually pretty interesting, if only for forcing journalists to ponder the value they bring to readers and what makes journalism different from, say, PR.
  
  But I agree that PasedenaNow's effort will fail badly. And it suggests that the editor there doesn't understand his own profession.
  
  
• The San Francisco Chronicle is cutting 100 newsroom jobs, or 25% of its news staff. Ouch.
  
  
• Susan Goldberg, Andrea's now-departed boss, addresses both of the above-mentioned points, at least obliquely, in an interview for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
  
  Notable quotables:
  "As painful as any kind of cutting can be, the upside is that it does force you to focus on your priorities. ... You really need to think long and hard about what makes you special in your marketplace. In San Jose, one of the things that made us special was our technology coverage. So, if that's at the top of the heap, than maybe something else falls off the bottom so you can keep doing technology coverage incredibly well. So in Cleveland, perhaps that would be coverage of the growth industry here -- the medical industry."
  
  "Whiny people who live in the past, they drive me crazy. Because, there's nothing we can do about the massive changes in our industry. ... Just whining and moaning about the way it used to be will not solve anything. ... I find as time goes on and our problems become more and more apparent, and our need to change becomes more and more apparent, my patience for 'whiny people who live in the past' becomes shorter."

Google: better and better

Not to sound like a fanboy or anything, but it's now officially easier to find a library book on Google (well, WorldCat through Google, actually) than on my library's own Web site.

Switching hosts

I'm moving the blog portion of this site over to Blogspot. This should result in better performance (and more flexibility with photos), but I may run into some transitional issues.

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What does it take to get fired from this administration?

Apparently, nothing short of losing a war or an American city.

From the Washington Post:

The Justice Department said yesterday that it will not retract a sworn statement in 2006 by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration, despite congressional testimony Tuesday that senior departmental officials nearly resigned in 2004 to protest such a program.

The department's affirmation of Gonzales's remarks raised fresh questions about the nature of the classified dispute, which former U.S. officials say led then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and as many as eight colleagues to discuss resigning.

I think it's about time for Congress to exercise its constitutional prerogative and impeach the lying SOB.

P.S. I just realized that "lying SOB" could apply to any number of people in the White House. In this case, I mean Gonzales.

Interactive guide to Republican scandals

Just in case you have trouble keeping up -- and who doesn't? -- Slate has a handy interactive feature. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover instances of the administration's staggering incompetence, just those that justify impeachment and/or jail time. 

Source: Slate Magazine

Shopping for Europe

Actually, this is mostly a test to see whether blogging in Europe is practical through the phone.

Joost invites

Chris Lanier is giving away Joost invites on his blog.  All you have to do is reply to his post and/or blog about it and you have a chance to win an invite.  This is my entry, but you can click here to find out more and enter for yourself.

For those who don't know what Joost is, it's a peer-to-peer TV download service created by the same guys who did Skype. Supposedly, it will revolutionize television.

But will it play on my Xbox Media Center Extender?

A good first step

Someone else notices the too-chummy relationship between the Washington press corps and the people they're supposed to be covering, as manifest by the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Tucked inside Frank Rich's Sunday column in the New York Times is indication that the newspaper will no longer play ball with the annual White House Correspondents Association dinners in Washington, which he calls "a crystallization of the press's failures in the post-9/11 era." He writes that the event "illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows....

"After last weekend's correspondents' dinner, The Times decided to end its participation in such events," wrote Rich. "But even were the dinner to vanish altogether, it remains but a yearly televised snapshot of the overall syndrome. The current White House, weakened as it is, can still establish story lines as fake as 'Mission Accomplished' and get a free pass."

Source: Editor & Publisher

For once, I'm glad I don't live or work in San Francisco

 Another day, another bridge collapse...

Bay Area residents began potentially their worst commute in almost two decades Monday, a day after one of the region’s most traveled sections of freeway melted and collapsed following a fiery crash.

...

Transportation officials said it could take months to repair the damaged interchanges, and advised motorists to use public transportation in and out of San Francisco. They added trains to the rail system, and bus and ferry operators also expanded service.

There's a "ferries in San Francisco" joke in here somewhere, but you won't hear it from me.

Source: MSNBC.com

Wal-Mart still doesn't get it

From today's Wall Street Journal (reg. required):

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., under pressure to boost productivity at its Sam's Club wholesale unit, is cutting a small number of store-management jobs at the operation as part of a rare nationwide job cut.

The world's largest retailer by revenue plans to consolidate about 3,000 salaried-manager positions at some 580 U.S. Sam's Club stores, according to people briefed on the situation. It isn't clear how many people will lose their jobs. The unit has more than 100,000 employees world-wide.

According to the Consumerist, they're cutting the department-level managers -- basically, the people in charge of the, say, the bakery or the photo department. But this isn't a cost-cutting move. Oh no siree. It's an effort to improve customer service.

Wal-mart: Penny-wise and pound-foolish

A Forbes article explains why short-changing workers actually increases costs for employers. I'm not convinced Wal-Mart's poor stock performance is solely a matter of labor costs; once a company hits a certain size, the law of large numbers begins to take its toll and dampens the growth shareholders demand. But it is nice to see that sometimes, it pays to do the right thing.

In almost all industries, productive, higher-paid workers can more than cover the costs of their salaries and benefits, if they are managed appropriately. For example, Costco Wholesale (nasdaq: COST - news - people ) pays its workers $17 an hour on average, while its competitor, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club, pays only $10 an hour on average; 85% of Costco employees enjoy company-provided health insurance, compared with less than half of the workers at Sam's Club. Significantly, these high wages and benefits do not come out of the pockets of Costco's shareholders. In fact, Costco has outperformed Wal-Mart on the stock market over the last five years. The real reason for the difference in compensation and benefits is that Costco employees have much lower turnover, better interaction with customers and are more productive than Wal-Mart's workers.

Source: Forbes.com

Confused again

Bush on Congress' recently passed troop funding bill:

“Instead of fashioning a bill I could sign, the Democratic leaders chose to further delay funding our troops, and they chose to make a political statement,” Mr. Bush said Tuesday morning before leaving for New York. “That’s their right. But it is wrong for our troops and it’s wrong for our country.”

Someone should probably tell our decider-in-chief that making political statements is precisely what politicians are supposed to do. And in a democracy, it's not the job of Congress to pass only the bills the president agrees with. You know, separation of powers and all that civics 101 nonsense.

Someone also should clue him in on that pesky federal law known as the War Powers Act.

Source: New York Times

One man's trash is another man's Ladmo Bag

A reporter here just got a story pitch from a PR person representing a text-messaging firm, suggesting we do a story on his firm and how text-messaging can be used for large-scale emergencies - like, say, a campus shooting. Nothing like a national tragedy to drum up a little publicity for your startup tech company.

(P.S. If you're confused by the headline, it's a reference to this.)

So much information, so little knowledge

 A recent Pew Research study finds that more than 30% of Americans can't name the vice president and 64% can't name the president of Russia. Wow.

The best part:

[T]he survey respondents who seemed to know the most about what’s going on — who were able to identify major public figures, for example — were likely to be viewers of fake news programs like Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”; those who knew the least watched network morning news programs, Fox News or local television news.

In better news, another Pew study says more rich people now say they're Democrats.

Source: New York Times

The true cost of that high-paying job in the city (or low-cost mortgage in the suburbs)

An interesting piece in the New Yorker about one possible reason for Americans' ever-increasing commute: they have a hard time tallying the intangible costs of commuting with the tangible gains of living in a cheaper location or having a higher-paying job.

Three years ago, two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, released a study called “Stress That Doesn’t Pay: The Commuting Paradox.” They found that, if your trip is an hour each way, you’d have to make forty per cent more in salary to be as “satisfied” with life as a noncommuter is. (Their data come from Germany, where you’d think speedy Autobahns and punctual trains would bring a little Freude to the proceedings, and their methodology is elaborate and thorough, if impenetrable to the layman, relying on equations like U=α+ß₁D+ß₂D²+γX+δ₁w+δ₂w²+δ₃log y.) The commuting paradox reflects the notion that many people, who are supposedly rational (according to classical economic theory, at least), commute even though it makes them miserable. They are not, in the final accounting, adequately compensated.

...

They tend to overvalue the material fruits of their commute—money, house, prestige—and to undervalue what they’re giving up: sleep, exercise, fun.

The article goes on to blame post-WWII zoning laws, which separated residential and commercial areas, but I'm not sure I agree with the thesis: even if workplaces were closer to residential areas, I doubt people would limit their employment options by proximity any more than they do now.

Am I the only one not the least bit suprised by this?

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Of course they lost the e-mail. And Nixon still doesn't know what happened to those 18 minutes of tape.

Source: Yahoo! News

CéU - Lenda

I saw this Brazilian musician's CD in a Starbucks yesterday and was glad to see her getting more attention in the U.S. I got the CD two years ago in Brazil for about $8 -- it was on sale, which I assumed meant it was selling poorly. But I was pleasantly surprised. Newsweek recently featured her, too, in a broader article about new Brazilian singers.

Good stuff.

Another journalist deathwish

The Tribune Co.'s new owner wants to turn away Google's free publicity and the reader traffic it generates.

It's time for newspapers to stop giving away their stories to popular search engines such as Google, according to Samuel Zell, the real estate magnate whose bid for Tribune Co. was accepted this week.

In conversations before and after a speech Zell delivered Thursday night at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif., the billionaire said newspapers could not economically sustain the practice of allowing their articles, photos and other content to be used free by other Internet news aggregators.

Source: washingtonpost.com

Free ice cream on Tax Day, April 17

For reals. 

Source: Ben & Jerry’s

Half Life 2: The Tower of Terror

Also known as "Too Much Free Time."

Words of wisdom

A blogger criticizes the national media for getting too chummy with politicians. While I don't agree with his contention that reporters can't gather facts for stories and for books at the same time -- and, no, I'm not working on a book myself -- he makes some painfully astute observations.

He singles out a recent incident that galled me, too, when I saw it: NBC's David Gregory yucking it up with Karl Rove, someone he's supposed to be covering, at the Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner last month.

How embarrassing. He looked like -- as the kids would say -- a complete tool.

Come on, David Gregory, when you were working as a summer intern, did you really picture yourself as the kind of person who would yuck it up with Rappin' Rove over a plate of rubber chicken?  Was this your goal?  How can you possibly not come away from these dinners embarrassed for your whole profession?  

If journalists want to send one clear sign to America that they have the least trace of concern for telling the unvarnished truth, this year's correspondent's dinner will be the last correspondent's dinner.

Global warming, Arizona style

An ongoing series in the New York Times looks at how climate change is hitting Summerhaven, Ariz., a so-called sky island near Mount Lemmon. Though the story acknowledges that the recent changes could fall within the normal range of ecological cycles(unless they're burning down homes, forest fires are considered a natural part of the area's ebb and flow), it also points to mounting evidence that the temperature is rising quickly and steadily.

High above the desert floor, this little alpine town has long served as a natural air-conditioned retreat for people in Tucson, one of the so-called sky islands of southern Arizona. When it is 105 degrees in the city, it is at least 20 degrees cooler up here near the 9,157-foot summit of Mount Lemmon.

But for the past 10 years or so, things have been unraveling. Winter snows melt away earlier, longtime residents say, making for an erratic season at the nearby ski resort, the most southern in the nation.

Source: New York Times

Insurers behaving badly

An interesting story that provides more evidence that our heath care system needs serious reform:

In 2003, a subsidiary of Conseco, Bankers Life and Casualty, sent an 85-year-old woman suffering from dementia the wrong form to fill out, according to a lawsuit, then denied her claim because of improper paperwork. Last year, according to another pending suit, the insurer Penn Treaty American decided that a 92-year-old man had so improved that he should leave his nursing home despite his forgetfulness, anxiety and doctor’s orders to seek continued care. Another suit contended that a company owned by the John Hancock Insurance Company had tried to rescind the coverage of a 72-year-old man when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease four years after buying the policy.

This comes just days after California fined Blue Cross -- my own health insurer -- $1 million for improperly denying claims when customers get sick. In both cases, the problem is a serious imbalance of power.

In a perfect world, everyone would be able to save enough during their working years to pay for their own long-term care. But salaries and long-term costs are unpredictable, hence the need the pool risk through insurance. But it's dangerous to put companies in the position of having to choose between your health and its profit. Because unlike other consumer products and services, you can't just move to a competitor when you grow unhappy with your insurer's cost/service balance.

Source: New York Times

My alma mater grows up

From USA Today:

With 51,000 students on the main campus, plus 10,000 more at three branches around Phoenix, ASU is already among the country's largest traditional universities. But unlike any current rivals for that title, it plans to keep growing -- to about 90,000 students over the next decade.

Sounds like an exciting time to be at ASU, though I do see the point of one critic in the story who complained that students are getting a community college education at a university price.

Source: USA Today

Start++

Like Vista's built-in search but miss some of the functionality of good old Windows Desktop Search (such as Web-search shortcuts)? Fear not: a young Microsoftie created an unofficial add-on that imbues Vista's start-bar search menu with those old functions and more.

Download here.

More heat over fired U.S. attorneys

One Republican, Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, has publicly urged Bush to fire Gonzales. Another GOP lawmaker, this one in the House and not ready to speak out publicly, said Thursday he planned to call next week for Gonzales to step down. And Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said Thursday that Gonzales had lost the confidence of Congress.

Other Republican lawmakers are trying to quell the uproar until they hear from Gonzales and his aides.

...

Bush on Wednesday defended the firings but criticized how they were explained to Congress. The president said he still had confidence in the attorney general but implied that his support was conditioned on Gonzales patching things up with lawmakers.

So it looks like Gonzales won't be fired today. I give him one or two weeks, tops.

Source: MSNBC.com

Doomed

As if having to download a separate application to read the newspaper wasn't enough of a hassle, The New York Times now wants users of its experimental Reader software (which I've slammed here before) to pay for the hassle. Thanks, but I'll continue reading it for free on the Web.

I've always praised the Times for its cutting-edge use of the Web, but this is a major step backwards. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Source: Poynter Online

Generic drugs, brand-name prices

The Freakonomics Blog examines the wide price disparities among generic drugs from retailer to retailer. It uses the generic equivalent of Prozac as an example; the price for 90 tablets ranges from $117 at Walgreens to $12 at Costco.

I can vouch for Costco's low prices, at least when it comes to the generic Claratin D. The allergy drug averages about $1 or so per pill (for the 24-hour dosage) at most stores and 33 cents at Costco.

The typical price seems to have actually increased a little over the last year, since stores stopped selling it on shelves (the drug can be used to make meth, so the rest of us suffer -- but that's another rant). My theory: comparison shopping has become more cumbersome.

Anyway, I didn't realize prices swung that wildly for other drugs, too.

By the way, if you haven't read the book Freakonomics, you should. It's a fascinating and thought-provoking read.

Source: Freakonomics Blog

Gonzo is gone gone...

Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire on Wednesday became the first Republican in Congress to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' dismissal, hours after President Bush expressed confidence in his embattled Cabinet officer.

"I think the president should replace him," Sununu said in an interview with The Associated Press.

And according to the story, several others are equivocating.

The only question is whether the "resignation" will come tomorrow or Friday. I'm betting Friday afternoon (because nobody reads news between noon Friday and 7 a.m. Monday).

Either way, good riddance. Lets hope he's replaced by someone who respects the rule of law and actually gives a damn about the U.S. Constitution. 

Source: MSNBC

Clueless

 San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarous proposes trying to extract licensing fees from sites that link to newspaper stories.

If newspapers aren't going to collectively reach into the pockets of online readers, they should at least focus their attention on other Internet players that are profiting from newspapers' content.

First off, there are the aggregators, sites like the Drudge Report and Huffington Post that pull together stories from a wide array of media sources (and charge advertisers a fee to appear beside links to content that they had nothing to do with creating).

This is not only impractical -- hyperlinking isn't just a feature of the Web, but its very structure -- it's business suicide. Why would you purposely drive away all the potential advertising?

Newspapers need to get over the idea that people are going to pay for content online. With a few notable exceptions -- The Wall Street Journal and maybe The New York Times -- they just aren't. Sad but true. Instead, newspapers need to focus their energies on getting advertisers online.

Google, which in many ways is far more useful than the typical local newspaper, doesn't charge subscription fees and somehow manages to rake in the dough. Why can't newspapers?

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

There is hope...

It appears that reading -- as in books, not text messaging or blogs -- is on the rebound. Better still, says this story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the writing quality is improving, too, at least for teen lit.

Like a lot of teens, Leslie Cornaby has a crowded schedule -- her days crammed with homework, hobbies and an array of techno diversions. When she's not checking e-mail, she's cruising YouTube or scrolling her iPod to tunes by Pink or Christina Aguilera.

She's also reading -- just for the glorious fun of it -- and says, "Most of my friends are readers, too."

The Shorecrest High School sophomore may not realize it, but she's enjoying the fruits of one of the most fertile periods in the history of young adult literature.

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Exactly

Duncan Black, responding to this piece from Joe Klein, hammers home an argument I've tried to make before against citing a rude lefty blog posts or nameless antiwar protesters when making the argument that Democrats are "just as bad" as Republicans.

To be sure, Democrats have their issues (see this shady lobbyist-sponsored trip for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for an example), but party spokesmen != some random person with a Web site.

Anyway, as his commenters try to explain to him over and over again, the point is that to the extent that the people Klein was trying to caricature with his list of left wing extremist characteristics actually exist (stipulating for sake of discussion at the moment that they do), they aren't members of congress, they don't have prominent positions in the Democratic party, they don't have columns in Time magazine, they don't get invited to discuss the issues on CNN or NPR, they don't write Op-Eds for the New York Times and, most relevant for this discussion, they aren't even prominent dirty ... hippie bloggers.

On the flip side, the caricature he offers up of right wing extremists are members of Congress, prominent members of the Bush administration, run the Republican party, have columns in Time magazine, regularly come on CNN to discuss the issues, and pretty much define the right wing blogosphere.

Source: Eschaton

A case of euthanasia?

Police are investigating whether a Kaiser Permanente transplant surgeon attempted to hasten the death last February of a 26-year-old San Luis Obispo man on life support in order to harvest his organs more quickly.

...

When the patient didn't die, Roozrokh allegedly told nurses: "Let's just give him some more candy," according to a person who was briefed on what took place but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations.

If these allegations are true, this is murder, plain and simple -- not to mention a public-relations disaster for the organ-transplant industry. It's hard enough getting people to donate their organs when doctors aren't trying to kill them.

Link to Police probe death in organ donation case - Los Angeles Times

In case you needed any more evidence I'm a geek...

From 2007_02_23

I got this in the mail today. It's my long-awaited Xbox Live Diamond card! The chicks will dig it.

Actually, there is a practical benefitto having this. Supposedly, I get all manner of discounts at non-geeky places such as Carl's Jr., TigerDirect and GameStop. Oh, wait...

Future-of-Journalism story roundup

• Slate's Jack Shafer argues that the 20% profit margins to which newspaper publishers have become accustomed are a historical anomaly. He contends newspapers have a choice: 1) Lower profit expectations to 10% or so and invest anything above that back into the product. 2) Buoy margins with cost cuts that end up killing the golden goose.
• Jeff Jarvis says running newswire copy and maintaining costly non-local news bureaus don't make sense in an age of hyperlinks. In discussions with my wife -- a newspaper graphics artist making the transition to the Web -- I've come to the same conclusion.
• Cnet reports that bloggers think Microsoft's new Reader software (not to be confused with this Microsoft Reader) is dead on arrival. When I first wrote about this software several months ago, I praised its ability to prioritize stories and highlight photos and graphics with a newspaper-like layout. But I also wondered whether users would have to download a separate application for each publication they wanted to to read. Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Apparently no one at Microsoft or any of its publishing partners realize that most people prefer a single application to read everything: it's called a Web browser. As I said in my initial review, Microsoft's Reader should be a browser plug-in that can work with any specially formatted site, not a standalone application -- and certainly not a set of them.

Narrowing the Religion Gap?

An interesting piece in last week's New York Times magazine about the odd political pole reversal in the 2008 race. That is, the Democratic frontrunners seem more "religious" than their Republican counterparts.

Try a quick political thought experiment. First, form a mental picture of the Democratic front-runners for president — Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Now do the same for the leading Republican contenders — John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Next (and this is the key step), imagine each of them in church, sitting in a pew, head bowed, or better still, at the pulpit, delivering a homily or leading the congregation in worship.

Of course, the article doesn't mention Republican Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, or Democrat Joe Biden, who doesn't seem very religious at all. But then again, those two aren't the leading 2008 contenders in their party.

Source: New York Times

Scientist Bush

First the flight suit, now this. If you ask me, I think he's a little too old to be dressing up in costume.

Adventures In Editing

The strongest drive is not to love or hate. It is one person's need to change modify revise alter rewrite amend chop to pieces change another's copy.

I've always found this little truism (featured in Arthur Plotnik's The Elements Of Editing among other works) funny, but never before today had I appreciated how true it is.

While editing a reporter's story this morning, I was driving myself batty trying to find a better way to say "glossy." After about 15 minutes of branching through various synonyms -- and synonyms-of-synonyms -- I finally stumbled on the exact word I was looking for. So I went back to the original sentence to replace it. Chagrined, I realized that my masterstroke was the reporter's original word: "glossy."

Some post-Valentine's Day humor

The U.S. Central Command's war plan for invading Iraq postulated in August 2002 that the U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006, according to the Command's PowerPoint briefing slides, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and are posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org)

Too bad it's not supposed to be a joke.

Source: National Security Archive

Gadget addiction

Some words of wisdom from a former tech (blog) writer:

Stop buying this crap. Just stop it. You don't need it. Wait a year until the reviews come out and the other suckers too addicted to having the very latest and greatest buy it, put up a review, and have moved on to something else. Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn't do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.

I'm better about not buying stuff than I used to be, but maybe I should impose a mandatory 1-year waiting period on myself for most technology-related purchases.

Source: Gizmodo

Windows Mobile Roundup

ActiveSync 4.5 is official, but if you've already migrated to Vista, you'll want to use Windows Mobile Device Center instead. And don't forget this Daylight Savings Time update. The page has DST updates for Outlook and Windows, too. The usual Windows update should take care of the issue from a Windows perspective, but I don't know whether Office automatically updates.

And while I'm on the topic of Windows Mobile, here are a couple of potentially useful map/search applications: Google Maps and Windows Live Search.