Category: Media

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Discussing Chromebook’s Success

One of the problems with bad news reporting: Those of us who strive to be responsible and accurate are lumped in with the lumps of coal, and the black powder rubs off on us. Illustrative: The excellent exchange I had over at BetaNews to the version of my Dell Chromebook 13 story posted there.

Commenter Joe HTH bristled about bloggers overstating NPD data and making Chromebook’s success much larger than it really is. I agree that this occurred about 18 months ago. But he levels his accusations at my reporting , which I assert correctly stats and interprets newer data that the analyst firm released just a few days ago. What follows is his comment and my response, in red and blue rather than block-quoted. I put story titles to my links, which are presented differently in the commenting system. 

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Flickr a Day 226: ‘White Flint Mall’

My daughter grew up going to the enclosed shopping center in Kensington, Md, where we lived for nearly a decade. There once was a kid’s play place on the third floor that was affordable and fun. Gone. We bought manga books, calendars, and tasty treats from the Borders. Gone. Molly trick-or-treated store to store on Halloween. No more, kiddies. My wife and I bought our wedding rings in a jewelry store that also is gone. The 850,000 square-foot upscale consumer cathedral closed earlier this year. Demolition is underway, and a court case brought by Lord & Taylor against the center’s management went before a jury earlier this week. Our memories, and those of others, are all that remain.

I chose self-titled “White Flint Mall”, which Mike Kalasnik shot on June 30, 2012, for its timeliness to current events. He used iPhone 4s, and for the first time in this series I slightly cropped a photo (to remove yellow road lines). Vitals: f/2.4, ISO 64, 1/2404 sec, 4.3mm. Mike, who joined Flickr in July 2007, runs the “Dead and Dying Retail” website, which offers startling look at urban decay. 

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The Paywall Problem

This week the long-dreaded Washington Post renewal email plunked into my inbox. So ends a glorious year of reading the digital newspaper on PC and tablet. My cheap thrill ride is over: “Your subscription will be renewed for a year on Aug. 26, 2015, at the rate of $149/year. As you’ve requested, payments for your subscription to the Post are automatically charged to your credit card”. I requested nothing. The Post imposed auto-renewal, which I cancelled the next day. My sub now ends on August 26.

Twelve months ago, the Post made an amazing email offer, good for just 24 hours: “Get a Full Year of Unlimited Digital Access FOR AS LOW AS JUST $19!” Wow, what a deal. We splurged and went digital on any device for another ten bucks. Washington Post is worth $29 a year—and it’s a good value for $149, too. But all the paywall news sites want that kind of cash or more from me. I’m willing to pay for good journalism, but my budget can’t accommodate them all. 

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Flickr a Day 224: ‘Piercing’

Our selection is so odd, or my ability to process the elements so lame, only the photographer’s explanation can make sense of it. “I went to the Institute for Contemporary Art today”, Nicholas “Nic” McPhee says of self-titled “Piercing”, captured on June 30, 2105. “As we passed through the Boston Financial District on our way there, we stumbled across ‘As if it were already there‘ by Janet Echeman. This is a big, glorious public art sculpture installation in the sky above a park—the Rose Kennedy Greenway”.

The suspended structure went up in May and goes down in October. So don’t delay getting to Bean Town if you want to see it. “This is actually a brightly colored—if the light catches it correctly—net/mesh of high strength fibers and LEDs that actually lights up in quite brilliant color at night”, Nic says. “I highly recommend the wonderful pictures on her website, which include some cool night shots”.