Category: Society

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Responsible Reporting Section 2 ‘The New Journalisms’: Chapter IV

Today’s excerpt from Responsible Reporting: Field Guide for Bloggers, Journalists, and Other Online News Gatherers spotlights the fourth type of journalism. The other three: Contextual, process, and conversational. Advocacy journalism is the most provocative of the five that the ebook identifies. Many people working in traditional news media outlets would scoff at the idea.

They would be wrong. Advocacy journalism has a long history—centuries old—but the Internet magnifies its reach and the soapbox upon which its proponents stand. 

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WWDC 2015: My Story in Tweets

As the week closes, I reflect on Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, which commenced on June 8, 2015. I watched the keynote on Apple TV and live-tweeted from my comfy couch. Fittingly from Chromebook Pixel LS.

I find iOS 9 interesting enough to test. Today, I signed up for an Apple Developer account; my old one expired years ago. The process took a phone call, because Apple claimed my bank declined to pay. How strange. So I tried another card. Then a third. Hey, my accounts are good! I called the bitten-fruit for assistance, and someone senior in developer support manually processed the $99 fee, because of the glitch. How fraked is that? 

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Apple’s Moral Marketing Charade

Nine years ago, a NPR interviewer asked me about Google and other U.S. companies censoring search results in China. The question was one of morality—to which I gave an answer she didn’t expect. That response, or my recollection of it, is appropriate for rather ridiculous and self-serving statements that Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly made three days ago.

“We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy”, Tim Cook said, Matthew Panzarino reports for TechCrunch. “The American people demand it, the constitution demands it, morality demands it”. Oh? What is moral? The answer I gave NPR in 2006 applies: There is no moral high ground in business. The high ground is quagmire, because all public companies—Apple surely among them—share a single, moral objective: Make profits for stockholders. Plain, pure, and simple. 

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Responsible Reporting Section 2 ‘The New Journalisms’: Chapter II

The second of the five journalisms was a topic on this site long before becoming part of my ebook  Responsible Reporting: Field Guide for Bloggers, Journalists, and Other Online News Gatherers. First reference: “Process Journalism and Original Reporting” (July 2009). The concept closely aligns with contextual journalism, which is the topic of the previous chapter published here a week ago.

I wrote the book understanding that the intersection of old and new media presents an opportunity to develop more realistic reporting guidelines. The cultural and ethical differences too often set one against the other, which process journalism demonstrates. However, online reporting demands a different way of thinking about news gathering and what the so-called quest for truth really means. 

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A Life Lesson

For three summers during high school, I participated in federal assistance program Upward Bound at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. My parents divorced when I was 13, and my then 31 year-old mother chose to raise four children alone. Jobs were scarce in Aroostook County during the early 1970s, and mom couldn’t earn enough. We were poor, by most American measures.

That circumstance and college plans qualified me to spend summers in Southern Maine and someday to attend a school like Bowdoin (I didn’t). The program has expanded such that if I were a high school student today, my UB participation would be at the University of Presque Isle branch rather than the one at Bowdoin. While closer to home (next town over), the benefits wouldn’t be as a great: Getting out of the County’s confines, experiencing life on such a prestigious college campus, watching Shakespeare at the Theater at Monmouth, or traveling—even for a day—to Boston. 

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Whatever the Future, a Bigger Screen in Your Pocket isn’t It

I love my Nexus 6. This morning, while waking to the rush of caffeine from steaming coffee, I read headlines on the device. “I’m Phed Up With Phablets: They’re too big to prevail” caught my attention. The short commentary, by Brian Rubin for ReadWrite, rails against the bigger-is-better-smartphone trend. Screen on my cellular is massive: 6 inches, and I forever promised myself to never use a phone so large—until I did and converted. Much as I enjoy using the N6, for which I can still manage many operations one-handed, smaller would be my preference. Perhaps yours, too.

Big isn’t necessarily better and reverses a longstanding trend in the other direction. Does no one recall when using a smaller phone was chic? Consider the StarTAC, which was a huge hit for Motorola going into the late 1990s. I remember when seemingly everyone used one of the diminutive cell phones. Smaller was better—and if there was real innovation in mobile device design shrinking size would be again. 

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What Good is Tidal HiFi if Content won’t Play?

Editor’s Note: Tidal resolved the problems long ago; I continue to subscribe a year later.

On May 1st, Tidal billed my credit card for the first month of music streaming. Yesterday, my subscription to Google Music ended. I should be satisfied with the switch, given how much more I enjoy 1411kbps lossless listening over the more typical 320kbps compressed streaming music. But recent, recurring service problems put my customer continuation into question.

Quality of content, or available selection of it, isn’t the problem. I find plenty of music to enjoy, and the default playlists are smartly curated. The high-fidelity is just that. But slow starts, drop-offs, and song skips disrupt the listening experience—and for a service costing twice as much as major competitors, like Beats, Rdio, or Spotify, I expect more but get less. There is no customer support option that I can find, either. 

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When One Gets Away

If you don’t follow my “Flickr a Day” series, you really miss out. The 133rd, “Jenna Bean“, is the most recently curated photo. There will be 365 pics picked this year, with no photographers repeated (unless by carelessness), Storytelling motivated me to begin the project on January 1.

But there are many images or shooters I want to feature but don’t. Okay, can’t. Two common problems: Resolution of the photos are too low or they are licensed All Rights Reserved. The project only features Creative Commons-available content. 

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Watch Me

I never expected to part with my Luminox 3187 (pictured), nor the Moto 360 that replaced it. But, hey, Craigslist sales happen. Both devices went to new owners this week. Meanwhile, I settle into supreme satisfaction using the LG Watch Urbane. We’re 10 days a team, and inseparable except for charging and showers—I do try to time their start together, seeing as how the Urbane comes off the wrist for either.

My initial first impressions are little changed. Overall, I prefer the LG smartwatch to the Motorola. Traditional styling, always-on screen, and satisfactory (but not exceptional) battery life are among the Urbane’s charming qualities. 

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Gregory Peck: The Eyes Have It

Apologies for going dark, letting Flickr a Day run on automatic (as I keep about a week’s worth of advanced photos primed to post). Wednesday afternoon, May 6, I picked up my first new pair of eyeglasses in six years, resulting in downward spiral of my vision rather than upwards. I couldn’t much read or write, which is why the absence. My wrong assumption: Customary adjustment period for aging eyes that require severe astigmatic correction and progressive lenses with bifocals. Wrong guess.

I have returned to using my old eyeglasses while the others go out for redo. I see so well, the temptation to demand refund and keep the aged pair is almost overwhelming. Almost. 🙂

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Contextual Cloud Computing is for Everyone

Keeping with my recommendation that “Writers, Own Your Content!“, I cross-post many, but by no means all, of my BetaNews tech stories here. As explained two months ago, much of my readership engagement takes place somewhere else, which is major reason there are so few comments here. Some of them occasionally deserve additional attention.

Late yesterday I posted my review of Chromebook Pixel LS, which Google released in early March. The write-up is purposely rah-rah to impose the importance of embracing contextual cloud computing and to shake up preconceptions about Macs being the tools of the creative elite. I also call “dumb” developers who may receive free Pixels during Google I/O later this month only to then sell them online.

One reader comment, from SmallSherm, to the BetaNews version caught my attention, for accusing me of calling him (or her) stupid and for insulting readers. After writing my response, I wondered how few people would ever see the interaction, which I regard as being quite valuable, there and absolutely none her. I present our two comments for your Tuesday thought train. 

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Chromebook Pixel LS Review

Nearly perfect is how I describe Google’s newest, and only, computer. If you’re going to manufacturer one thing, then it should be exceptional, which is the other way I describe Chromebook Pixel LS. The company introduced the original in February 2013, available in two configurations. Twenty-five months later, the notebook refreshed—refined rather than revolutionized—beating Apple to market shipping a laptop with USB Type-C, which brings new connectivity and charging options.

FedEx delivered the costliest Chromebook configuration to my door on Friday the 13th, in March. I ordered the newest Pixel from Google two days earlier, within hours of the laptop’s launch. I use no other computer. It’s more than my primary PC and could be yours, too. This laptop rests at the precipice of future computing, for those open-minded enough to welcome it. This review is purposely preachy, which reasons hopefully will be apparent should you read all 1,800 words.