In late April I purchased the Olympus PEN E-P2 micro four-thirds digital camera. I’m ready to start posting photos after resolving problems with a defective kit lens.
Category: Media
Apple of My Eye
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/12819723] Short film “Apple of My Eye” demonstrates how good storytelling isn’t about the tools but the storyteller. Michael Koerbel shot and edited this delightful video on an iPhone 4. No PC or other […]
All-Purpose Media
Until the Net arrived, the history of media had been a tale of fragmentation. Different technologies progressed down different paths, leading to a proliferation of special-purpose tools. Books and newspapers could present text and images, […]
Add Flow to the Blogging Stock
Today, I start an experiment here that will take the blog off track a bit, but which could better build readership. “What?” You ask. “Joe, don’t you have another experiment going with comments turned off?” Yes, and that one ends next week.
The experiment comes to answer a question: What is the best way to be the better blogger? I need to make money writing at a time when writing is becoming a commodity service. Increasingly, journalists like me are obsolete. The answer I seek may be to the wrong question; perhaps blogging isn’t the writing I or many people like me should pursue. But I try.
Eight Reasons I Love Pop17
If Sarah Austin is the future of journalism, I have hope that accuracy, authenticity and accountability may yet survive. Yesterday, Sarah tumbleblogged something she posted 16 days earlier that I missed: “Blogging Code of Ethics.”
Now there’s a strange concept: Blogging and ethics. It’s strange because I’ve seen too many blogs acting as marketing fronts—and too many others scraping other sites’ content and reposting it for profit. In neither case does much fact checking go along with the blogs. I identified the problem in posts “The Difference Between Blogging and Journalism” and “Gossipers of the InterWeb.”
Trashed iPad/iPhone
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPJSjnizxu4] Storytelling is an art form, but it isn’t solely the purview of artists. Video “Trashed iPhone and iPad!” is good example. The video isn’t the most sophisticated filmmaking, but the story is compelling: […]
Comments, No-Comments Debate gets Noisy
People love catfights, which perhaps explains some of the interest in the comments/no-comments debate between me and Mac blogger John Gruber. It’s a pseudo-debate, really, since the only engagement is blog posting. John and I haven’t directly communicated.
I started it all, by calling out John for not having comments on his blog. I told him to “Be a man,” which I actually meant with some backslapping good nature. But some people are morally offended. Stacia Van Doll reblogged the post as: “QUIT being a douchebag Joe Wilcox.”
Blogging: Is Curation or Comments Better?
John Gruber has responded to my Saturday post at length: “I’ll Tell You What’s Fair.” John’s response is thoughtful and responsible, so much so I’m trying things his way. I challenged him to turn on comments at Daring Fireball, which clearly won’t happen soon, if ever. I don’t agree with all his reasons but see how he applies a writer’s mind to blogging. His writing is an artform.
Of Course, Technology Changes You
Over the weekend, I unexpectedly read New York Times Op-Ed “Mind Over Mass Media,” by Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker. Professor Pinker rallies for the status quo, argung that “new forms of media have always caused moral panics…but such panics often fail basic reality checks.” He talks of a panic, but I don’t see one. However, there is a new book generating some debate—Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. The Op-Ed is rebuttal without reference.
Be a Man, John Gruber
If John Gruber allowed comments on his blog, I wouldn’t need to write this post, and it has been long-time coming. I considered writing it every time I read something outrageous at Daring Fireball but couldn’t directly respond because John doesn’t allow comments. Finally, this morning, I had enough.
New Media Is All About Personality
New media—and social media, for that matter—share something in common with old media moguls: Personality, as in the persons so acutely identified with the organizations. The brands are big, but often no bigger than the people behind them.
You’re Zucked!
Perhaps I don’t pay enough attention to Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis. Something, somewhen, somehow bugged me about his blog posts—maybe it was frequency or attitude, I don’t recall—and so I nuked his RSS feed sometime ago.
But post “The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand” has me howling delight, even though Jason rambles on even more incoherently than I do. Thanks to Dare Obasanjo for tweeting the link.