Category: Media

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Flickr a Day 69: ‘Breaking the Silence’

The intensity exploding from the photographs of Isengardt can’t be ignored, and it draws in and envelopes you. Today’s selection is among his tamest, but I’m not alone fancying it. The image is his Flickr banner. Color and mood make self-titled “Breaking the silence”. Yeah, I can almost hear that car punching through the fog.

Bond is a name. You don’t need to hear the James. I have to say the same of Isengardt, whose name is a mystery to me. But not his equipment. He used the Canon EOS 550D to shoot this photo, on Sept. 30, 2012. 

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Goodbye Gigaom

Twice a day, my wife or I take meals to her 93 year-old dad, if he doesn’t want to eat out for lunch. I sat with the gent in his apartment early this evening reading to him about the day in history when a Twitter notification from Harry McCracken caught my attention: “Stunned to hear that Gigaom is no more, but also confident that its excellent staff will find good gigs elsewhere”. Say what?

It’s true, and not a prank as I first suspected. A pioneering tech blog—one of the few credibly news reporting—has ceased “all operations”. What looked like a normal day of posting, and with higher output given the Apple Watch event, was anything but. Maybe the backstory will make sense of today’s closure. For surely an operation with news, research, and events doesn’t evaporate suddenly. The greater concern is resurrection as something less, with menial staff, and focus on posting for pageviews. 

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Flickr a Day 64: ‘Harvest Storm Clouds’

I debated long about whether this photo should be today’s selection. For starters, Richard Robles is no longer active on Flickr, which he joined in January 2006, and I could find little else about him—even confirmation that the gentlemen still lives. The image also isn’t the sharpest, taken with the Kodak EasyShare CX7525, which by today’s standards is a vintage digital compact. But the colors appeal, and bleak landscape is home: Aroostook County, Maine.

Aroostook, or “beautiful river”, but referred to as the “Crown of Maine” on maps and in tourism marketing, is a single, isolated county. Aroostook is so expansive—larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined—that many Mainers refer to it as “The County”. 

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Generating Pageviews is Nothing Like Selling Newspapers

Responding to my post “Stop Paying Bloggers and Journalists for Pageviews“, someone asked me: “What’s the difference between pageviews and selling papers?” I answered: “They aren’t anything alike”, which garnered response: “Certainly the journalists who cause people to buy papers are kept around. So isn’t a PV like selling a paper?”

“Nothing like it”, I answered. Of course, the questioner asked “Why?” The answer could be a 20-point list, at the least. But I rat-tat-tatted some explanation, which I recap here. The comparison is the traditional news organization versus the typical blog. I may add to the list over time but start with five items. 

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Flickr a Day 62: ‘To Breathe as One’

When making today’s selection, I chose culture over photography. The image isn’t representative of Mait Jüriado and his skills shooting portraits. The pic is one of 107 in his album “Estonian Song Celebration 2009“. He is from Suure-Jaani, Estonia, but lives in Tallinn, which is 149 kilometers north off the Gulf of Finland.

The amateur song festival takes place every five years, and the 2009 event marked the 25th celebration. Typically 25,000-30,000 singers perform, and there is an accompanying dance festival.