Category: Media

Photo by Joe WilcoxDec 3, 20108:55 pm

Itsy Bitsy Etsy Shop

On December 1, my wife started selling handmade bead necklaces at Etsy. It’s something we discussed for a long time. She’s new to Etsy, but not me. I have long been early adopter of online services. For example, I opened my Yahoo account in 1996, I rented my first Netflix DVD in 1999 and in 2006 I joined both Facebook and Twitter. I opened an Etsy account in July 2006 to purchase for my daughter the Amigurumi Flowery pink bunny rabbit with matching bag. It’s pictured below without the bag; photo taken today. My teenager still has the handmade animal four-and-a-half years later.

Society by Joe WilcoxNov 23, 201011:50 am

What iTunes Really Means to The Beatles

This morning I tweeted: “I put Beatles albums in my daughter’s iTunes library years ago. Suddenly, now that Beatles are top iTunes downloads, she’s listening.” That succinctly explains what The Beatles get from the exclusive distribution deal with Apple. There are millions of Millennials who aren’t acquainted with Beatles music, and they might never be with their parents listening to it. But everything changes if their friends are Beatling.

News Media by Joe WilcoxNov 22, 20101:29 pm

Economist Does iPad Right, Why Can't New Yorker?

On Nov. 19, 2010, the Economist released mobile apps for iPad and iPhone. I received email notification the same day and new print issue with info about the apps a few hours later. Economist charges one fee to subscribers. My print subscription provides access to online content and now to the mobile apps. That’s exactly the right approach. So why are so many other publishers doing digital wrong?

Blogging by Joe WilcoxNov 18, 20104:29 pm

You Can't Trust Most Polls or Surveys

Internet polls are fun but rubbish. Formal surveys conducted by so-called experts aren’t much better. If you disagree, consider this: A poll I conducted for Betanews asking “How would you identify yourself as a computer user?” puts more than 25 percent of respondents as Linux PC users and less than 61 percent as Windows PC users. Do you believe that? I don’t. But I do believe, as early results indicated, that there are more Betanews readers identifying themselves as Linux PC users than Macheads. But more than one-quarter are Linux users? Perhaps in some alternative universe, but not this one.

News Media by Joe WilcoxNov 13, 20106:40 pm

Make a Stand Against Top-10 Lists

Film critic and social media convert Roger Ebert made a stand. I’m with him. No more top-10 lists.

I’ve been planning to write this post since October 31st, the day after Roger wrote for the Wall Street Journal: “Why I Loathe Top 10 Film Lists“. I wanted to put some distance between my agreement and responses from top-10 whores like Business Insider and Huffington Post—the latter dignified Roger’s commentary with a lowly tweet from a Mother Jones blogger.

News Media by Joe WilcoxNov 7, 20105:43 pm

Was MSNBC right to Suspend Keith Olbermann?

On Friday, Keith Olbermann essentially got the boot from MSNBC for making three undisclosed political contributions—or that’s how I interpret suspended without pay. The donations violated MSNBC policies designed to prevent any apparent (or even actual) conflict of interest. For someone who does cover politics (Hey, wasn’t that Keith headlining election-night coverage?), it’s not unreasonable that there be no apparent bias.

Blogging by Joe WilcoxNov 1, 20107:08 am

You Can Stay Five Minutes, or for an Hour

Welcome to my resurrection. I first started writing at joewilcox.com soon after registering the domain in December 1999. For years, I called the site “Chronicle of Technology, Culture and Stupidity.” In October 2009, I took joewilcox.com offline, briefly bringing it back for a few weeks in May 2010.

I pulled the site to diminish branding conflict with technology writing done at Betanews and to launch Oddly Together. I’ve since struggled to find the right tone for my writing, and I’ve long questioned whether shutting down joewilcox.com hurt my brand.

Photo by Joe WilcoxOct 31, 20101:36 pm

Ghosts of Halloween Past

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 […]

News Media by Joe WilcoxOct 5, 20107:43 am

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).

Journalism by Joe WilcoxSep 22, 20109:23 am

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?

News Media by Joe WilcoxSep 17, 20106:13 pm

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 […]

Apple by Joe WilcoxSep 12, 20103:53 pm

‘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.