epitome

News Stand 1

2011-07-01T18:28:00.001-07:00

Software and Systems 1

2011-07-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hadoop's growth sparks competition
When Hadoop first appeared as an open-source framework for scalable distribution computing with large data sets—back in 2009—the project was a lone player in a seemingly empty marketplace. But two years later, a dozen startups are all vying for the Hadoop crown...
http://www.sdtimes.com/HADOOP_S_GROWTH_SPARKS_COMPETITION/By_Alex_Handy/About_HADOOP/35689

Windows Phone 7 Developers Get Hands on 'Mango' Beta
Both a new software development kit (SDK) beta and "Mango" beta were released yesterday for Windows Phone 7 developers.
http://adtmag.com/articles/2011/06/30/developers-get-hands-on-mango.aspx

Hadoop Ecosystem Starts Crystallizing
What a difference a year makes. A year ago, Big Data was an abstract concept left to the domain of a bunch of niche players and open source groups. Over the next 9 months, the Advanced SQL space dramatically consolidated as EMC, IBM, HP, and Teradata made their moves. In the past 3 months, it’s been Hadoop’s turn.
http://www.onstrategies.com/blog/2011/06/06/hadoop-ecosystem-starts-crystallizing/

Skytap, HP Optimize ALM for Cloud Dev, QA, Provisioning
Skytap and HP are partnering to provide cloud-enabled ALM (application lifecycle management). Beyond simple ALM, the Skytap/HP approach lets cloud adopters use automation to break through silos across dev/test, QA and provisioning to more quickly identify, locate and resolve bugs -- and even make user-requested updates.
http://www.idevnews.com/stories/4721/Skytap-HP-Optimize-ALM-for-Cloud-Dev-QA-Provisioning

brightcove test

2011-05-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

brightcove test

Christian Heilmann Mp4 from vidly

2011-03-01T16:26:00.000-08:00

With his usual verve, Christian Heilmann presented a view on HTML5 and its potential role in changing the nature of development in years to come in session at Heart and Sole. Included is a sprightly walk through the HTML5 demo showcases of today.

http://vidly.s3.amazonaws.com/3l4e0q/mp4.mp4 Download “Multimedia on the web” as MP4

new test

2011-02-08T18:51:00.001-08:00

Click to read the latest news

test

2011-02-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

Click to read the latest news

arrg

2011-02-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

test

test feb

2011-02-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

In this topic:

News:

1 - 3 of 100

The Mummy

2010-10-31T11:46:00.000-07:00

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^~~~~~~~~~~~~^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Big Ryder clouds. Harsh moutains that believe. Talking: the occultist and the British museumist. Talking about the curse of the mummy. The gods of egytpt still live in these hills. some spells, are still potent. Back in the tent. The spell words spoken. The dead eyes of Karloff: glisten.

Sweet shall be your rest if your heart does not reproach you.

2010-10-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

T.K says :

Sweet shall be your rest if your heart does not reproach you.

Further explaination...

THE glory of a good man is the testimony of a good conscience. Therefore, keep your conscience good and you will always enjoy happiness, for a good conscience can bear a great deal and can bring joy even in the midst of adversity. But an evil conscience is ever restive and fearful.

test tt

2010-07-28T08:07:00.001-07:00

2010-07-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

test 111

2010-07-16T11:46:00.001-07:00

Poem from home

2010-05-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

Search Me Again

2010-04-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

Here's another take on that..

Search me

2010-04-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

This is a search engine. It was created by Google..and it looks at my two existant recreational web sites. http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=010805947555201689882:x-mv22sgzwe&hl=en

test apr 1

2010-04-01T14:27:00.001-07:00

How does it work? Why Canvas and HTML5 video of course:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVASCRIPT:

for (var i=0;i<12;i++){

var can = document.getElementById('c'+(i+1));

var ctx = can.getContext('2d');

pieces_can.push(can);

pieces_ctx.push(ctx);

}

i = setInterval(function(){

var sWidth = dWidth = 160;

var sHeight = dHeight = 120;

dx = dy = 0;

var source = document.getElementById('puzzle_image');

for(var i=0;i<12;i++) {

sx = (i*sWidth)%640;

sy = ((Math.floor(i/4))*sHeight);

pieces_ctx[i].drawImage(source, sx, sy, sWidth, sHeight, dx, dy, dWidth, dHeight);

}

}, 30);

test in lv

2010-03-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

gorp me bloody hearties gorp

Friend Feeds

2010-01-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

N Saunders made a great list of Life Scientists Friends Feeds...most commented entries. huzzahs to him and hope he doesnt mind me picking up his list and placing it here
Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the costs and benefits : JISCContributor: Richard P Grant
Wow. Biophotons for signalling. Anyone knows anything about this? How credible is this?Contributor: Iddo Friedberg
I’m going to do a round of looking at some of the Science Social Networking sites againContributor: Cameron Neylon
Trying to figure out how to engage the chemistry communityContributor: Deepak Singh
Does an article in pubmed belong to the legal public domain, can I copy and paste it in wikipedia?Contributor: Pierre Lindenbaum
I’m thinking about putting a proposal to bring our data resources kicking and screaming into the Semantic WebContributor: Andrew Clegg
If bioinformatics is a profession on its own it should have some core basicsContributor: Attila Csordas
I have 12 Google Wave invites – who wants one?Contributor: Björn Brembs
Info request: does anyone know anything about Calypte Biomedical?Contributor: Bill Hooker
What are the current feelings on ResearchGate starting it’s own preprint (self archive) service?Contributor: Brian Krueger
Life Scientists: most liked entries
Elsevier announces the ‘Article of the Future’Contributor: Alexey
I’m thinking about putting a proposal to bring our data resources kicking and screaming into the Semantic WebContributor: Andrew Clegg
“The All Results Journals – ‘Because all your results are good results’Contributor: Shirley Wu
Signing up to be notified about google waveContributor: Steve Koch
Science: The looming crisis in human geneticsContributor: Itachi
Human form [cross-sectional animated gif]Contributor: Adriano
I’m going to do a round of looking at some of the Science Social Networking sites againContributor: Cameron Neylon
Great Tweets of ScienceContributor: Abhishek Tiwari
Univ. of Washington grad student Darren Begley plans to live stream his PhD Thesis defenseContributor: Mary Canady
Comparison of biological wikisContributor: Andrew Su

test again

2009-11-10T18:53:00.001-08:00

Test

2009-10-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

Sketch Standing at the Great Democrat’s Funeral Motorcade

2009-08-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

The first time I found Mission Hill it was because I got lost. The portal my car flew by was the bodega ‘Casa Cris’ - owner Cris was later killed by robbers - that day I skedaddled. Why are the signs in Spanish? But I returned. First to Eldora, later Calumet. And it’s been home. And church bells are always ringing.

Quite a day for Mission Hill – ‘the biggest day ever.’ Rain picking up Hurricane Dan’s edge. Bomb sniffing German Sheperds. Security high. As Sen. Ted Kennedy makes his last motorcade ride. Four presidents come to Mission Hill to see the end of the great Kennedy. Pres. Obama at Mission Church will be front and center. Said Ted: He didn’t mind not being president; it just bothered him that someone else was. He followed the summon of service. And we are on the map.

Corner of Tremont and Parker. Saturday morning rain. The neighborhood that devil may care forgot. Black SUV after black SUV roll in sad parade. Sen. Dodd rolls down his window, the pol inside him alive alive. The little Kennedy girls in black dresses in big front bus windows too waving. The police snipers remarkable for their pupils piercing. In neighborhood that came to me my home. The guest were full-form famous and powerful – but little Rosie from the hill in knock-out dress of black got in I think.

Less centered around the Mission Church of Irish immigrants is the neighborhood now than 30 years ago. Now it is Ted Kennedy’s entrance to the portal of the veil of the vale. The rich man who’s been going through the eye of the needle – trying to get to heaven in time. Mission Church I know your Italian marble, electric red votives, tall bouquets of crutches. Greatest sermonist Father Manion on the radio. Cecelia will watch on TV til sun is going down and Ted is buried at Arlington with only the light of the flame on his brother’s grave.

We line up finally across from the Tobin Gym – Tobin being greatest son of Mission Hill, a mayor in his 20s in the 40s; bridge namee – gym where Cousy and Celts would practice in the days before Gatorade. In front of resurrected Boston Clutch home of wire driers and drive wheels, where you still get hand written receipts.

Saw many of the mighty: Sen Dodd, Doris Kearn Goodwin and Richard Goodwin [he of the crazy hair].Short Emily Rooney. Barney Frank out of Duncan Donuts [‘I love you Barney. You speak the truth,’ says I. Serious Bob Woodward got his companion to hold the umbrella as they walked and he thunk.

The patter builds. The chatter subdues. Here they come. The ruddy cyclist police micks lights strobe metal and blue.

Here’s the picture, picture in my mind:

Futura the lettering ‘Maurice J. Tobin Building’ signed in aluminum.
Built with yellow bricks. Stubborn maples sprout in front.
US, Mass.flags draped windless at half mast.
The asphalt black and shiny wet with rain with two fresh yellow stripes up the median. Cast metal barricades gray.
Black ponchoed, black hatted Swat team members – many of them black men – in sidewalk line array back turned to Ted.
Eyes darting, darting. My view slightly occluded by woman’s umbrella.
Then a shadow of a casket in a long Black Cadillac driving slow.

Then it’s over the hill and down to Flan OBriens. For the TV mass. The priest drank the wine at 11.59. The Mission church altar was crying. Angels with horns blowing away. Placido Domingo did Panis Angelicus. The flaming golden tears wobbled in the ceiling. All this on TV. In the bar a few wept.

Pres. Obama called Ted: “The Soul of the Democratic Party.” “We must live out our lives the best we can with purpose.” I am interviewed by a writer for the Washington Times for an article entitled ‘Thousands Bid Kennedy Farewell.’ After the mass a few black-sports-coated Cape tanned captains of America and their better halves came in - in Irish spirit and tipped a few.

This story is told over and over here these days. Here by my friend Chris H. Years ago when his wife was diagnosed with MS just before Clinton came in and there was a health care initiative going on, he and mate wrote their senators. Kennedy’s letter came back quickly. He responded in a week.

The letter itself as it was phrased in a way indicative that the senator understood this effected somebody’s life. (The junior senator’s response came two weeks later, and was long and not very readable.) Ted’s letter was bing-boom-direct. We are fighting for this, for you.

“Ted’s letter was relevant. It was full of ‘goddam it, yes we can!’ Direct and to the point. It was hand signed.” This story is told often: “What he said meant the word to me.” As the stories pile high, they seem like acts of charity.

feeds

2009-08-17T11:20:00.001-07:00

The Arta

Blues

Poesy

Music

Shroud

Technology

News/Media

General

Post it and they will come

2008-12-22T20:14:00.000-08:00

Just as Publishers Clearing House looks for contestants on Twitter we hear from David Carr of a Newspaper that Shuns Web, and Thrives.

From the story: “Why would I put anything on the Web?” asked Dan Jacobson, the publisher and owner of the newspaper. “I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?”

Stop reading if you heard me say this before, but when I did the business plan for a trade press publisher's web site in 1996 I looked at any online revenue as:

1. A bet on a new future medium,
2. A counter to our competitors, and
3. Gravy beyond what we already were making.

I did not forsee the Web killing print. It was exciting just to be a part of it, of course. I remember the trepedation when I had to make the business case...to suggest to the publisher to put his product on the web for free.

Met a reporter a few weeks ago at a conference and he says, as we discuss this type of stuff: What do you expect? If they give it away? What will happen?

What did happen? What is happening?

Hmmm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/business/media/22carr.html

Bill Drake dead, bogus creator of winning radio style

2008-12-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

I wouldn’t say I remember a time when radio was 'great'. Fact is living in Boston provides a lot of great radio now - with more than a half-dozen college radio stations in the non commercial category.

But for all intents and purposes radio is narrow, lifeless, boring. Radio is terrible, and there is every reason to think something similar could happen to the Web.

This is said while noting the passing of Bill Drake who transformed regional and local radio that had a bit of salsa into national radio peplum.

Drake came up with the formula of homogenized Top 30, with robot DJs. In the 60s, George Carlin and others could satirized weird [think Wolfman Jack] or just mindless Fab Good Guys, [think Murray the K and Cousin Brucie] Top 40 radio chatter, but they hadn't the notion of where things were going once Drake became the God of Radio success and the Arbitron of what ran on AM. And FM too. Drake was a 'ruthless, detail-minded operator.' Drake took Top 40 down to Top 30. Worse, he ensured what was heard in Itica was the same as Atlanta. Like a Rolling Stone, or Maybelline, or even The Eggplant that Ate Chicago - these were not going were not going to happen. Nixonian to a t.

Hard to realize who alive radio and music was in America once. You don’t hear it on oldies staions, which play a Draconian formula too. [Recommened : Yesterday's Memories and other shows on weekends on WATD from Marshfield, MA http://www.959watd.com/Streaming.asp]

The formula, was no personality, no stray from playlist, tight narrow play list, everything by the numbers. Draconian syndication. Seldom do we point out such a despot at his passing. This is such a time. R.I.P. He took the DJ down a notch, which worked for the stations, but killed the art. And that death dripped out into the music itself. He is not a guy who would program Charlie Rich's Don’t Put No Headstone on My Grave.

As related by William Grimes in NYTimes we hear author Marc Fisher's take on Drake: "He took Top 40 Radio and turned into a machine."

And then Drake's own words in 1990 to LA Times: "We cleaned up AM radio. We put everything in its place."

Web beware: No personality, no stray from playlist, tight narrow play list, everything by the numbers, machine like. Forumula: Maximize mechanicals - ensure endless repeatability. - Jack Vaughan, Boston

Bill Drake, 71

Skew that pimple, searcher

2008-11-29T18:25:00.000-08:00

John Markoff wrote about Microsoft researchers that published the results of a study of health-related Web searches on popular search engines. One of the researchers, Horvitz, an artificial intelligence expert at Microsoft Research, said many people treated search engines as if they could answer questions like a human expert.

The boffins found Web searches for things like headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare. Horvitz likened this to “medical schoolitis” – where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You’ve read so much about disease that you are sure you have it.

A wonder here: if Web searchers have a tendency to jump to awful conclusions, doesn’t that skew Google results? Is the Google brain likely to evolve and become similarly demented as the stock market in heat? "Peoples is my business" was a bit of old vaudeville.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/technology/internet/25symptoms.html

In your Facebook

2008-10-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 seems to have entered the coloquial but not changed the basic business of the Web. The most extraordinary of "Web 2.o" successes -say Facebook and MySpace (-full disclosure: I have never been to either site) - are rattling around looking for targeted ad dollars like the rest of everyone.

Back in July in the NY Times ["New Tool from Facebook Extends its Web Presence"], Chief Executive Mark Zukerberg of Facebook said "We are going to see big social networks start to decentralize into a series of social applications across the Web" as the company announced it was facilitating a new set of Web services for such disruptive micro networking.

The Web as mass media still seems to be the big driver; the Web as a targeted media - as a profitable collectin of 'long-tail' points - exists as hard scrabble.

Meanwhile the original aggregator, the AP, may be under pressure as small papers under the pressure of the Web and the advertising tumble cut subscriptions. Remember, the AP's service is being usurped by the Web. Remember, without the AP, American papers only have two bureaus in Bagdhad.

Meanwhile the ad page situation is undergoing a strange type of settling. The issue of how to handle reaminder ads is prominent as a gazillion pages are viewed, wanting for an accompanying ad. The so called ad network maringalizes the overall prodcut. Even the Times is replete What is the alternative?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/24facebook.html

Let them eat mags

2008-09-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

BW started a new Social Networking site called Buisiness Exchange.

Like many such things it starts with a fever of posting, by editors mostly, and then we find a bunch of orphaned threads. I dont chortle over this. My 'heart goes out' to the editors because I been there. But BX is in the after birth doldrum.

A thread I subscribed to is the one on the mag biz. Will let it speak for itself:

The magazine industry is being shaped by forces largely outside its control, from technology and demographics to economics. Are magazines dead?

Caught the drift of a thread and commented. Actually it was a one hit wonder pointing to Observer.com. Magazines Are Turning Into Luxury Objects, Says James Truman. And while the article has some bland assertions, it does seem true that, say, if you are on a plane, the magazines being read look like rich folks stuff, like cigars in the Wall Street Era.

My comment was..

The idea that there are fewer magazine in not insensible. That they will have less utility is a more contentious assertion. Make has done well. Real Simple too. Magazines as a way to improve your life style has a place. To dream of a better life too, especially when you are at the airport.

http://bx.businessweek.com/magazine-industry/
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/magazines-are-turning-luxury-objects-says-james-truman

Look back in rancour at BusinessWeek redesign of 2007

2008-09-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on Moon Traveller Herald on Friday, November 23, 2007

1. In the old trade press days, we used to do surveys of readers, and we'd be quite surprised when some publication beat us in the ‘news’ category. Oh sure, we expected to lose out to some publications, which were in fact better. But some of the publications that beat us out merely ‘reran press releases’ – that was the phrase we used. Sometimes the term ‘news’ was part of their title banner. But the usual thread was: They looked like a mess. Poorly laid out. Not like a magazine. I recall one wag once opined: “The worse it looks, the more people think it is news.” The uglier, the newsier. That has stuck with me as an odd truism. And as publications react to the onslaught of the Internet, their tendency to prettify what they do, though sensible on one level, seems to me to work against their most sensible goals.

2. There always was a traceable trajectory with publications on the decline. The publication was once strong, but now the market and competitors conspire against it. Maybe the staff and management seem to be coasting. They do what they’ve done because it worked (never mind that it may have merely worked slightly better than some misfiring competitor). So what happens? An executive editor is brought in, so the editor can have more time to think. The executive editor brings in his old pals, does a reader survey, wields a knife, the editor is out, the new editor goes to a lot of lunches with the publisher, etc. The important thing is that now someone decides it's time to do a redesign.

Do a redesign. Look better. This philosophy is being played out in spades now that the whole notion of print is going down the tubes. There's a precipitous decline in what we call magazines. They pretty up corpses for funerals, and as with funeral detail, you have to follow the steps, damn the meaning. The redesign is an end in itself. It usually runs contrary to the news gestalt that usually got the publication going, 'cause it's so darn pretty. In the age of the Internet, it is usually based on wise [but wrong]premises. Which brings me to today’s topic: BusinessWeek’s redesign.

3. McGraw-Hill in general and BusinessWeek in particular have long had a reputation as semi-scientific research-driven operations. Over the years this had led to an
extraordinarily well-designed publication – if the definition and purpose of design is to communicate useful facts efficiently. You could read the table of contents and find upfront summaries of every article, and headlines that conveyed the pertinent drama or message. If you only had time to read the ToC, you were smarter for the experience. If you had time to thumb through the publication, the decks, subheads, info graphics , pictures and captions would tell you that story in just a bit more detail. Even if you only read the two or three stories pertinent to your business, you had managed to learn something larger about the machine of the economy. The Wall Street Journal is the only pub I’d put on par with Business Week in terms of providing [close to] totally efficient information communication.

“People are too busy too read” was what McGraw-Hill heard in the old days – just as it’s heard now. Their moves were planned, and not based on the publisher’s luncheon with his brother-in-law in Buffalo. The problem was that people were busy, but the solution back then was to carefully build a communicating juggernaut. Nowadays it's to place "white space” as the ultimate good, feature art that acts like an ink blot test – as if the business people would bother with abstract bemusement and pointless nuance on their way to figuring out what is going on – and slash the character count on headlines until they're guaranteed to remove information, but, by the way, gain an art award.

The new Business Week is visually engaging in a soft pleasant way. It doesn’t do the things a pub should do for the reader in conveying news. Of course, just like your typical fey new ager, it wonders what news really is. Such decadence is not a response to the Internet, it is a disease of civilization. 'Twould be better to look uglier and assault the visual psyche than go softly into the good night.

4. Where do the art directors’ diddling leave off and the editors’ middling begin? Business Week was one of the first pubs ever to go to a two-page table of contents. Now it’s back to one, but half of that goes to an art element. The new half-page TOC is indecipherable. The old provided full heads and excellent decks that told you what the stories were about. In terms of info transfer, there is no contest. The old example:

Baffling Google – Why the tech titans has so much trouble making its innovative products stickVersusA delicate moment for Hong Kong’s financial markets
One tells me what is going one, using more type characters.The other tells me something is going on, using less type characters.

Time will tell how well the three-digit designators for pages [eg., 078] works If the folio regularly misses the 100+ mark, it will look vividly like what it is: an art director’s conceit. There is a new section called “BTW.” Which has the benefit of using the modern argot of the e-mail savvy, but which roils the waters: News is not ‘by the way’ [read: you can ignore if you want] stuff.

The new Business Week did not coil into this scared fetal position suddenly. Great gobs of the publication have been overtaken by Life style stuff aimed at gratuitously
garnering ads from resort operators, car makers, and golf club manufacturers. It is a general decline.

BTW: When will this mail-bag column with Jack and Suzy Welch end? Have they ever had an idea, or a portion of an insight? Is it actually possible that Christopher Finlay,
Chicago, sent in the question: “What are they keys to insuring a strong start in a leadership position?” or that Anonymous, Hartford, wrote: “I’m a large-account sales guy who loves his job and want to keep doing it. But how can I stay excited and current so I don’t become “the old guy”?

5. So what do I like? Godawful ink! The Nation, The New Republic, The American Spectator. The New Yorker, The New York Times! Yes they are all feverishly redesigning too. What says ideas? What says news? Words on paper – lots of them. It’s hard to read words on the web. It’s a good place for impressions. Bloody ink in mass quantities is what this era calls for. I may be swimming against the stream, but that is better than being swept over Niagra.

On another level what is going on is a removal of belief in advertising. If the print side ad revenues were going up, the world would look different to the Business Week Powers that Be. Advertising grew up in the era of Freud, now passed. Now, people think they are actually measuring something with the web that they think they cannot faithfully measure in print. The more that useless chatter fills the papers and mags, the more the forecast of pulp doom holds. And you can make it prettier looking too.

Hyper Local or Bust

2008-08-04T18:47:00.000-07:00

Hyperlocalization is afoot. The Pew study pointed that out recently: that newspapers are doing more local stories and fewer national and international stories in the face of the competition of Internet news.

The Boston Globe spent a great part of the last three years experimenting with this and related notions, in the wake of its purchase by the New York Times. Like most best practices in desperate states, the determined execution of a new paradigm such as this…the headlong rush to only that which is local… can hasten further the eddying decay. Look at the Anthrax story.

A government scientist kills hisself as the Feds prepare to charge him with 6 Anthrax Post 911 murders. The Globe gets it in the Friday paper. Puts it at the bottom of page two. Because it is not local.

It’s top of page at Google all of that day. Maybe it came in late, and they couldn’t rip up page one; on Sat they did put it on page one [again at bottom]. I suppose you could consider yourself going back to first principles by being hyperlocal. You can try to outthink your competition [the Web] and end up outthink inking your own self. In my opinion.

The Feng Shui of the I Ching of Web 2.0 – A summation

2008-07-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

To succeed in Web, one has to studiously throw out accepted perceptions and consider first principles.

The new ‘audience’ for technical information like the new ‘audience’ for political news [and others] is not a classic audience. It demands surpassing involvement/experience of its ‘editors’. It prefers participants to observers. Articles per se [as noted before ] hold no especial value with readers [newsmakers are a bit more charitable] because the anti-commercial façade of the web dovetails so nicely with the web generations attitude to IP.

The Web rolled over some conventional press. The feeling at the start was that it would complement or supplement. But in many cases it supplants. In the case of the trade press at play was a certain loss of underpinning of notion of the universe of readers useful to advertisers. Behind that was a general lack of trust in psychology, the force behind 20th Century advertising. ['It may work on other people, but not me.']

In pursuing first principles the essential question remains: What are the fundamental questions. What content do people want? In what context do they want it delivered? How can the endeavor support itself or profit so as to support further endeavors? Party’s over!

Just a side note – this relates to newspapers today. Studies tell the editors to use more up front summaries [See NYT any day, p2-5] Its for ‘people in a hurry’ ‘its weblike’ . yes but so what. I think it’s a mistake. What is more useful trat of a newspaper thant its insane readability versus other media. Throw out the toc all together and let them read away – but make that work! First thing they told us in Journalism school was to go on the subway and watch over their shoulders as people read a paper. To see how people read it. Don’t make it more like the web!

Unrelated but something I picked up during the course of this quest Quotes of David Ogilvy

First principles

2008-07-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

If I were to distill the issues I have seen investigating the Web, I could do no better than to repeat Mohammed El-Erian on finance on Charlie Rose. It here follows, with other notes.

“When we see something new .. we want to assess it according to what we have seen in the past… [instead we should] go back and ask fundamental questions.”

He went on to say we should go out into the field, to see what is behind the statistics.
[[Further, El-Erian went on to say that economic/financial situ is such that next pres will ‘have charter to start at first principles.’ [And if you want a financial tip: “We are in a world of deleveraging – meaning that ‘people are getting out.’”]]

Putting a description to the changing media scene

2008-07-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

Putting a description to the changing media scene is an easy thing to do. For a good time now, ‘Web 2.0’ would do. It’s in upheaval, and something new is coming, etc. Not to different then, than Web Point One. From the Get-Go there was a democratization in the Internet. And an anti-commercialism that coincided neatly with a general sense that, if you could copy it - it should be free. [Copy meaning with a button push not with the old means, such as a tracing [paper].] And there has been a pretty skilled literary bunch ready to disgorge on topics too. People have said Jack you write good criticism – you should be paid for this stuff. Well, one person said that.

Anyway, I just post it, and don’t have time to do the hustle. To actually do battle in the real forum of ideas, which is a pretty commercial realm. I got a friend who does great reviews of film, and probably draws a few useful hits to his Webmaster, but recompense is promotional DVDs. When I was on the B.U. News in the 70s, we had a critic staff that was solely driven by such freebies [which I tried to put an end too, which was a mistake; I was Arts Editor for about three months and I ended up gutting the section with my sense of what was proper]. But I ramble.

The point is that the Web is not truly paying for its content – some would say the NYRB doesn’t do that either, that it’s the higher educational system that pays the freight. What’s the point?

Yesterday’s NYTimes Science section discusses InnoCentive, and other Web-based efforts to tap the wisdom of crowds, sometimes using sweepstakes, sometimes using coupons. “InnoCentives” aside, the point is there are people out there who are ready to get involved who might solve problems such as how proteins fold. John Seeley Brown is quoted, explaining.

This reflects “a huge shift in popular culture, from consuming to participating.” I think this is central to the phenomena of Web 2.0, which for a guy who made his living grinding out copy for 25 years, is a little hard to get his arms around. We expect to pay when we consume, but not when we participate.

The commercial leg of the stool is being kicked out of late - but it’s not really as if the magic lucre mercury is moving from the print side of the ledger to he web side.

Addenda: There is a lot of good stuff in this article about the effect of the crowd on research, specifically on protein folding via http://foldit.it.

Hurt: Shrink paper staff quality

2008-07-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

If you are packrat like me you once and awhile pick up an old paper lying around the house. I am talking old - like the '70s or '80s. If you do that - you may see some of this horrible fear about newspaper demise slightly shredded.

Papers in those days were not jampacked with tons of great stuff. Articles were short. The demand of the press ruled. There was a type of news inflation over the last 20 years and things are just coming down to earth - because there is not the advertising to back the product. So I take the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study called "The Changing Newsoom" with salt. Any day still I can throw out half the news in the paper and half the words in the stories I keep. [eg, There is a story in today's Glove about a mailman that wants to wear kilts. Stop the presses.]

It's said that an institutional memory is being lost. That reporters dont know their beats - well let them trial and error and learn them. That is no different than in any field of endeavor. And the Internet is less to blame than is sometimes supposed. Television was the former threat to news, and it does seem as time goes by people become less literate, and more televisual.

Yes it is awful to me that newspapers appear to be dying. Without a great story like Watergate, the idea of a Fifth Estate seems to be dissipate. The idea that only two or three papers have Bagdad bureaus is frightening. Some old power WASPs probably chorttle. Someone can still come along and shake up a town with headlines, but not doing things as they are done now.
http://www.journalism.org/node/11961

Kindle

2008-07-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

Saw the Amazon Kindle at a trade show in Orlando last month. There is something cool about text coming over the ether in radio waves, I must say. And the view screen experience was pleasant.

The fellow showing it to me was a publisher. He said it was great because it was highly profitable, compared to a physical book. I wonder..

..It is hard to Xerox and entire book. It is not hard to copy a whole digital book.. and this mere facts seems to diminish its value in the eyes of the audience.

Reading Paul Krugman recently: he writes that ‘bit by bit everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more a nominal price.’ The recipe for a business is, like the Grateful Dead, to sell t-shirts.

When the web first happened I did business plans that showed how trade magazines could make money with the new medium that supplemented the old medium. Little did I know .. the web killed the trade magazine. – Jack Vaughan

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2008-03-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

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2008-02-12T12:24:00.001-08:00

2007-08-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

The ServerSide Interoperability Blog » Neward, object data bases and ORM issues

2007-05-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

As we begin our story, Ted notes that he is wearing a DB4Object shirt.
What has happened … and … I am obviously wearing their shirt, the DB4Object guys, one of the things that they have done, a couple of things that they have done differently that I find myself agreeing with, what they have done first of all is they have not stood up and said, ‘We want to replace the relational database in the IT world.’ As a matter of fact, for a long time they were aiming squarely at the embedded space where guys are still rolling their own persistence engine. Like guys are sort of writing Java object, serialization objects to disk and then folding them back up.

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2007-04-19T19:23:00.001-07:00

epitome

News Stand 1

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Christian Heilmann Mp4 from vidly

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In this topic:

News:

The Mummy

Sweet shall be your rest if your heart does not reproach you.

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Poem from home

Search Me Again

Search me

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Friend Feeds

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Sketch Standing at the Great Democrat’s Funeral Motorcade

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Site Specialties

Post it and they will come

Bill Drake dead, bogus creator of winning radio style

Skew that pimple, searcher

In your Facebook

Let them eat mags

Look back in rancour at BusinessWeek redesign of 2007

Hyper Local or Bust

The Feng Shui of the I Ching of Web 2.0 – A summation

First principles

Putting a description to the changing media scene

Hurt: Shrink paper staff quality

Kindle

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The ServerSide Interoperability Blog » Neward, object data bases and ORM issues

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