The National Geographic post “Halloween Costume Pictures: Spooky Styles a Century Ago” inspired my own photo essay. National Geo credits the first image “photograph copyright DaZo Vintage Stock Photos, Images.com, Corbis”. The other images also […]
Category: Media
Non-Top-10 List for Journalists
I have come to loathe top-10 lists, and I have stopped writing them. They are a sucker’s play for pageviews, although I have always used top-10s mainly for their presentation value. Now that they’re everywhere and displacing original content, I’ve got something of a personal boycott going (hence, why there have been none from me recently at Betanews). It’s with that introduction I come to maim a top-10 list posted last week. “The truth about the newsroom—straight-up!” offers 10 things reporters “want from [public relations] pitch to coverage”.
Deanna White tweeted about the post, to which I responded after reading: “My list would look nothing like this. If that’s what my peers want, someone pull out journalism’s obituary & run it” (News organizations generally keep prewritten obituaries ready to run the second someone famous enough dies).
What the Hell is Sarah Lacy Thinking?
There’s a proposition on the California November ballot to legalize marijuana. Sarah Lacy must be smoking some already. Her TechCrunch post “Now that the Recession Officially Ended….Whatever Happened to that Other Shoe?” is so out of touch with reality—what else could it be?
Matt Taibbi Wits British Petroleum Senseless
It was sickening enough when British oil giant BP set new standards for corporate scumbaggery in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, turning the Gulf of Mexico into its own personal toilet and imperiling entire species […]
‘Engineers are Retarded’
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2eDKB_BuhQ]
To Apple purists, documentary “Welcome to Macintosh” is surely nothing new. But to little `ol Joe, flipping channels on a Friday night, the documentary was a surprise airing on CNBC. By far, former Apple development engineer Jim Reekes gave the most acerbic commentary about the company—not so much what he said but how he said it.
AP Should Not Credit Bloggers
I don’t share some bloggers’ enthusiasm for Associated Press’ new policy crediting them. On September 1st, the wire service issued advisory: “AP announces guidelines for credit and attribution,” which includes bloggers. AP shouldn’t credit bloggers because it opens way for lazy reporting and undermines the news organization’s reputation and credibility (well, outside the blogging community).
'Can Ping Be Saved?' is the Wrong Question
Apple’s social music discovery service isn’t even a week old and Fortune blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt asks: “Can Ping be saved?” Oh yeah? One million signups in 48 hours is such a failure. There are thousands of CEOs or product line managers who would say: “Gimme that problem. I’ll suffer through the failure of gaining 1 million customers in just two days.”
Ping's Alternate Reality
Ping, Apple’s “social music discovery” service, has changed the selection of “Music I Like” to half Snow Patrol songs, one of which I’ve never played. LOL. I finally understand what’s going on. Apple technology is […]
The House Behind
Every picture tells a story. The tale here is: “Oops.” Focus was supposed to be on the lamppost. I salvaged the image because the house is clear as viewed through the glass. The “House Behind” is […]
Virgin Mobile ‘Crazy Life’
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/43487168] I simply lo-o-o-o-ve the Virgin Mobile “Crazy Life” marketing campaign. The commercials are energetic, provocative and true! When your life is your mobile you don’t have a life. Take my iPhone 4 […]
The Imperfectly-Priced Perfect Butt Boyfriend Sweatpants
Have you ever heard of a “test” store? I hadn’t until yesterday (Aug. 25, 2010). Abercrombie & Fitch supposedly has one in downtown San Diego. Shopping there meant spending 20 percent more on a pair of sweatpants for my daughter than at another store a few miles away.
The Case for Curating Comments
Five days ago, I quietly turned on commenting two months after turning it off. Comments are temporarily back at my personal website. Perhaps this second stage of experimentation will lead to my making comments a permanent fixture or instead giving John Gruber the apology I promised should the commenting feature be permanently removed. I’m still wondering if John’s approach might be right.
Before my mid-June post “Be a Man, John Gruber,” his blog had no commenting system, while mine offered Disqus. I insisted that “his no-comments approach is out of place in an era when so many Websites or services provide discussion tools and encourage readers/viewers to use them.” There was much more to the reasoning. Read the post to get it all.