Not Gordon either.
"Charles dreamt I had an affair with Steve Coppell. I said to him, 'Thanks a lot! You might have made it Mourinho!'"
Cooking goddess Nigella Lawson reveals who hubby Charles Saatchi thinks is the man of her dreams.
From the BBC.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Media-Sport-Cookery-Advertising Quote of the Year
Not Gordon either.
"Charles dreamt I had an affair with Steve Coppell. I said to him, 'Thanks a lot! You might have made it Mourinho!'"
Cooking goddess Nigella Lawson reveals who hubby Charles Saatchi thinks is the man of her dreams.
From the BBC.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
When the Trust Fund runs out...
...
From The Feinline, the blog of Sempre Management cofounder Michael Feinstein. On that Madoff Madness. (Financial Cliche Warning: there is that Ronald Reagan quote: otherwise it's a balanced account, as they used to say in Q1 2008.)
From The Feinline, the blog of Sempre Management cofounder Michael Feinstein. On that Madoff Madness. (Financial Cliche Warning: there is that Ronald Reagan quote: otherwise it's a balanced account, as they used to say in Q1 2008.)
* Don't just trust your VCs reputation. Verify it through your own diligence, including blind reference checks and discussions with executives of companies that didn't work out.
* Don't trust your VC when she agrees to some additional terms that aren't on the term sheet or promises to 'take care of you' if you are let go. Verify every deal and agreement with terms in writing. You never know if the person you make the agreement with will be the one you have to enforce it with. If the deal is really a deal, no one should object to putting it in writing.
* Don't trust that your VCs will fund your company if you can't raise money elsewhere. VCs will always promise support for your company, but that isn't the same as wiring funds into your account. If the VCs are promising to backstop your company with a bridge financing in the event that you can't raise money, get that agreement in writing, including the terms. Once your company is actually on the brink, the terms may change. But, if you have a prior agreement, hopefully it will be honored.
* Don't trust the commitments that are promised by customers and partners. Follow-up with emails confirming, or formal contracts if appropriate. It may seem overly formal during more friendly relations, but the actual commitment may give you some moral high ground if the going gets tough.
Derek Draper and the Labour new media blitz - minus women
There was an interesting post on Guido Fawkes last week about a new media breakfast being hosted by Derek Draper at which Blue State digital presented how Labour can use the internet to win the next British election. PR Week reported, after the event:
PR Week has learned that [Philip] Gould was present at a ‘new media breakfast’ meeting which took place in London this morning.
Also present was David Lammy, the Labour MP with the best connections to US president-elect Barack Obama.
The meeting was convened by Derek Draper, who is overseeing the party’s blogging initiative. It was attended by an assortment of Labour-supporting bloggers, PR professionals and political campaigners....
PR Week added:
A handpicked selection of 77 individuals were invited to attend the meeting and around 60 are thought to have attended.
Those who were invited but could not make it included Weber Shandwick European CEO Colin Byrne and Google European comms director D-J Collins, but both are understood to be fully behind of the initiative.
Guido kindly added the names of those who were invited:
Tom Watson, Colin Byrne, Sadie Smith, Mark Hanson, Simon Buckby, David Clark, Charlie Whelan, Chuka Umunna, Sue Macmillan, DJ Collins, Sarah Mulholland, Richard Angell, Ed Owen, Simon Alcock, Douglas Alexander, Patrick Diamond, Sunder Katwala, Gavin Hayes, Jessica Asato, Robert Philpot, Richard Huntington, Tristram Hunt, Ben Wegg-Prosser, Damian McBride, Andrew Dodgshon, Theo Blackwell, Tom Miller, Tim Allan, David Bradshaw, Stuart Bruce , Jag Singh, Matt Strong, Paul Simpson, Spencer Livermore, Ed Owen, Chris McShane, Matthew Taylor, Alex Finnegan, John Miles, Adam Dustagheer, Dan Thain, Mark Lucas, Luke Pollard, James Crabtree, Tim Shand, Alex Hilton, Simon Redfern, William Davies, Howard Dawber, Nick Anstead, Richard Lane, Jon Steinberg, Pete Bowyer, Steve Cowan, Hopi Sen, Luke Bozier, Andy Regan, Toby Flux, David Taylor, Chris McShane, Matthew McGregor, Noel Hatch, Sunny Hundal, Greg Jackson, Dave Prescott, Luke Akehurst, Phil Dilks, Jonathan Upton, Simon Fletcher, Tom Price, John Stolliday, Adrian McMenamin, Paul Hilder, Paul Miller, Ben Brandzel, Anthony Painter, Ravi Gurumurthy.
Now I have no idea if this list is accurate, but notice only one fact: there are - I think - four women's names. Perhaps Guido was misinformed about the composition of the Labour leaning digerati?
Or perhaps Muscular technocracy is now the engine of British politics as well?
Those Big Beasts.
UK Parliament and Bloggers: a change is gonna come?
After initial scepticism at Westminster, the view now seems to be that e-journalism is here to stay and these bloggers should have passes, even though the print journalists take a broadly sniffy attitude to the likes of the Mole, while being happy enough to follow his lead.
Back to the green paper. It is likely it will make it easier for people to sue for libel by slashing the disproportionate costs of legal action, possibly by establishing a small claims court for libel.
More on small claims libel cases and a possible "blogger clamp down" here. From The Mole.
Database Hugging Disorder (Google & Africa)
From the Google.org blog.
Why is so much “public” information not accessible (i.e. government budgets, service level indicators, population data) and sitting on servers in London, New York, and Geneva but not accessible to citizens, media, and even planners in Africa countries? This clearly needs to change.
What is less intuitive, however, is that there is so much information, knowledge, and wisdom within Africa that is not making its way to politicians, planners, and policy makers who make decisions about Africa. We often hear that teachers, nurses, and civil servants do not show-up for work across the continent and this is a primary contributor to the poor quality of public services. Do we bother asking why absenteeism is such a problem? Ask teachers, nurses, or administrators and they will tell you.
More here.
Forget newspapers, what about magazines? Twitter weekly?
If 2008 was the year that newspapers learnt that the diagnosis is fatal, they are going to die in print - maybe not today, or tomorrow: but someday - then 2009 must be about magazines...and books...sitting in that same doctor's waiting room. Here's John A. Byrne, executive editor of Business Week in the US, and editor in chief of BusinessWeek.com.
When we talk about other new ways to compete, most magazines don’t seem to know where to start. Aggregation? Forget it. Few editors want to link to other stories that send people away from their own sites. Curation? Writers don’t “curate” journalism or discussions. They report and file stories and move on. Verticals? Editors want content that appeals to the broadest swath of people and gets massive traffic. User generated content? Most editors still turn up their collective noses at stuff created by their audience. Computer algorithms that replace news judgment for the prominence you give a story? You’ve got to be kidding. And Twitter? What’s that?
Writing in the Nieman Reports Byrne describes how his title has morphed from:
...a brand that produces a weekly magazine to one that is pretty much a 24/7 multiplatform organization
Much more that's interesting beyond newspapers here.
US online newspapers - what's new in '08
Survival strategies here, everyone. My first is in Social but not in Print. My second is in Online but not in Ink...
Thanks to News After Newspapers - and ultimately the Bivings Group.
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Big Beasts Return pt 1 - silent film
As if by whim of the gods.
Karl Lagerfeld premiered “Paris-Moscou,” a silent film about the early life of Coco Chanel recently. The Daily Beast mentioned it today.
Lagerfeld thought his silent film for Chanel was an appropriate format for a contemporary audience, likening the experience of watching a silent film to surfing the Internet. “Today, people are ready for silent movies again, as they spend time—hours, I would say—looking at text messages and e-mails,” he told WWD.
Here's a link to the film - it may well be very slow.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Public Domain
A website that will allow publishers to generate a notice of copyright infringement with a few clicks of the mouse is due to launch in January. The Publishers Association said that its portal, unveiled yesterday at its International conference, would make reporting copyright infringement straight forward and save time. But it added that the website also had the added benefit of allowing publishers to pool information and identify repeat infringers.
From the Bookseller.
As is this:
Glamour model Katie Price will be honoured as a "Reading Hero" at a Downing Street reception hosted by Sarah Brown, wife of the prime minister.
Price, who has autobiographies, novels and children’s books to her name, was chosen as the celebrity who has done the most to encourage children or adults to get reading this year in a public vote held on the National Year of Reading (NYR) website. She will join 33 other Reading Heroes nominated by an NYR panel at the Downing Street event next February.
Just one of those trends...
...Ann Mack, director of trendspotting at JWT talks to Media Life.
Why will authenticity be so crucial for brands in 2009?
In the wake of a financial crisis that has seen established institutions topple overnight and many others teeter on the brink, authenticity will become paramount for brands as they look to regain credibility and trust. While this trend will be most apparent in the financial sector, it will surface across a range of categories.
With ongoing revelations of corporate greed and misdeeds in the media, people are growing increasingly skeptical of any brand’s claims, whether it peddles shampoo or retirement packages. People are seeking—and demanding—reliability and accountability. Marketers will need to work even harder to prove their brand is the authentic one above all, especially given that “authentic” has become such a misused and overused label.
Kiosks are back - with semantics (in Germany)
The idea is that their system can be used for quick and precise interaction with any rich semantic content. Real-world settings might include heavily trafficked places like airports or train stations, where they envision their kiosk ending up in the future. (They don't actually like the word "kiosk" -- they prefer "shared interaction space.")
From CNN.
A pair of German researchers have created an experimental kiosk that lets you easily use semantic Web capabilities - even if you have no idea what they are. All that is needed is an iPhone and a finger with which to drag icons around on the kiosk's touch screen.
From the Advanced Tangible Interface lab.
The Return of the Big Beasts: plumbers too
Bagehot in last weeks' Economist ran a piece about the return of the big beasts. Here's what Bagehot means:
Now, almost as a herd, these resting big beasts, the formidable and the chimerical, seem to be moving back to the front-line of politics. It is a telling migration.
The most exotic specimen to be unleashed is, of course, Lord Mandelson, resurrected as business secretary in October. Gordon Brown also brought Margaret Beckett and Nick Brown, two other veteran ministers, back into government. Less conspicuously, he has been taking advice from Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s hatchet-man. Rumours that Alan Milburn, a former health secretary, is set for a role in policy formulation may be unfounded. But David Blunkett—who, like Lord Mandelson, twice resigned from the cabinet—may re-surface. Peter Hain—forced out by a funding scandal in January, but now partially rehabilitated—retains Mr Brown’s esteem. On the Tory side, there is persistent talk of using Ken Clarke, a former chancellor, home secretary, health secretary (and so on) for more than the odd policy commission. Mr Cameron has already offered him a job once, and the two are on good terms. Michael Howard, Mr Cameron’s predecessor as leader, is increasingly conspicuous on television.
Meanwhile Jack Shafer, pimping his Slate death watch on newspapers (Shafer plays Pythia to Jeff Jarvis's Apollo these days), comes up with a list of jobs lost because of the digital:
• Bank tellers
• Typewriters
• Typesetting
• Carburetors
• Vacuum tubes
• Slide rules
• Disc jockeys
• Stockbrokers
• Telephone operators
• Yellow pages
• Repair guys
• Bookbinders
• Pimps (displaced by the cell phone and the Web)
• Cassette and reel-to-reel recorders
• VCRs
• Turntables
• Video stores
• Record stores
• Bookstores
• Recording industry
• Courier/messenger services
• Travel agencies
• Print and cinematic porn
• Porn actors
• Stenographers
• Wired telcos
• Drummers
• Toll collectors (slayed by the E-ZPass)
• Book publishing (especially reference works)
• Conventional-watch makers
• "Browse" shopping
• U.S. Postal Service
• Printing-press makers
• Film cameras
• Kodak (and other film-stock makers)
Reading the list I'm wondering whether any of these Big Beasts will make a come-back in 2009. I think some will. Call it the new arts and craft movement: a reverence for well made books, hand made limited editions, film rather than pixels; vinyl has already made its case, and drummers won't ever go away, not in the AC/DC mode, anyway. Print porn seems to still be Belle de Jouring, and book & record stores need only the V&A "nice cafe" moment to become nodal meeting points (they can become flaneur HQs, of course: social networks with great coffee). And "repair guys"? Surely they are the most likely Big Beast revivals: currently a television repair man call out is £150 minimum. (Well, that's how far my online research took me.) What other kinds of battle hardened, experienced, Beasts are due a revival? Keynes? (See below). Local news (see whichever Big Beast makes the jump to own more than EC1)?
Trust...well, there's the big thing.
Who would, after all, have predicted "Light Entertainment" as the Big Beast cultural capital of the virtual decade? John Seargeant, anyone?
The Democratisation of Doubt '08
Keynes via Robert Skidelsky.
The basic question Keynes asked was: How do rational people behave under conditions of uncertainty? The answer he gave was profound and extends far beyond economics. People fall back on “conventions,” which give them the assurance that they are doing the right thing. The chief of these are the assumptions that the future will be like the past (witness all the financial models that assumed housing prices wouldn’t fall) and that current prices correctly sum up “future prospects.” Above all, we run with the crowd. A master of aphorism, Keynes wrote that a “sound banker” is one who, “when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way.” (Today, you might add a further convention — the belief that mathematics can conjure certainty out of uncertainty.)
But any view of the future based on what Keynes called “so flimsy a foundation” is liable to “sudden and violent changes” when the news changes. Investors do not process new information efficiently because they don’t know which information is relevant. Conventional behavior easily turns into herd behavior. Financial markets are punctuated by alternating currents of euphoria and panic.
From the NYT.
RIP: Trust
Trust goes from bad to mad.
Madoff mess slays trust
From Newsday
Looks like another one bit the dust:
And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.
Luke 4:23 (King James Version):
Why Travel?
CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.
From the Apple site.
And then there's the Scobleizer:
So, what should we expect over the next year? A lot of bad news for big trade shows.
What’s killing them? The Internet. You can launch a product live now from a living room. Thanks to Stickam, Ustream, Qik, Kyte, YouTube, Flixwagon, Viddler, Vimeo, SmugMug, etc and blogs.
Just give the people on Facebook something to pass along and talk about and your product is out there, big time.
End of year there's a list for everything:here's Trust USA
Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Verizon and FedEx for the first time have made an annual ranking of the top 20 most trusted companies in the United States.
From SF Gate.
Google, however, dropped off the list, released today by the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe in San Francisco, as did Countrywide Financial, Bank of America (which acquired Countrywide) and Weight Watchers.
Meanwhile Yahoo goes into trust overdrive:
“In our world of customized online services, responsible use of data is critical to establishing and maintaining user trust,” said Anne Toth, Yahoo!’s Vice President of Policy and Head of Privacy. “We know that our users expect relevant and compelling content and advertising when they visit Yahoo!, but they also want assurances that we are focused on protecting their privacy.”
From Yahoo! Finance.
We have been here before, but that doesn't mean we won't be here again: printcasting
Daily Me gets update. Personalised printed newspapers? Printcasting.
To paraphrase a character in the recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, history shows that humanity doesn't evolve until it's standing at the brink. Right now that's exactly where newspapers are. Next year, expect to see smart newspapers moving quickly away from the status quo -- huge overhead, one size fits all, poorly targeted ads -- and toward a new model that is more efficient, community-driven and personalized than ever before. And expect advertising to be more highly-targeted, measurable, and self-serve.
From the MediaShift Ideas lab.
Printcasting Prototype Demo from Dan Pacheco on Vimeo.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
American Society of Newspaper Editors to drop "paper"?
“It is time for ASNE to recognize in its name and its membership that we are way beyond print-only newspapers,” Hall said. “All journalists are now digital news producers, and while print remains an important delivery mode, more and more news is being produced only for the Web.”
The change will be discussed in April 2009. If there are any newspapers left in America by then.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Too Busy even for E-Books?
Then read these:
Dreaming of Moscow
Makes life pass by unnoticed.
Did you hear the gun?
Haiku book service online. Above is...
WOW: no job for you
On a gamer forum, a vigorous discussion about whether it's fair for employers to discriminate against World of Warcraft players when hiring, on the grounds that WoW players are never fully out of the game.
Cory Doctorow gets us started on the subject of World of Warcraft and employment prospects (few). Via Boing Boing.
On the Literary Scent
Then Warhol had a brain wave. Get every writer subject to mention which scent they wore - this would appeal to the perfume houses. I don't know if Bob bought the idea but I think it's an excellent one. Perhaps Roger Alton of the Indy and other editors might like to think about it - I have often wondered whether VS Naipaul wears a cologne and would love to know whether Doris Lessing likes a squirt of Caron's Poivre - a lively blend of red and black pepper, cloves and other spices. The bottle comes in a limited-edition Baccarat crystal.
From today's Madame Arcati.
Some Random Nerd: is interesting on Web 3.0
The more I think about it, the more I think that it's the move away from the PC that will mark the next stage of the evolution of the internet; the idea of the internet was of connected and networked computers. The idea of the Web is all about interconnected and networked documents. The move away from the PC and towards other devices— a "Web of Things"— seems to me to be the next logical step.
The idea of the PC as the "hub" of your information is starting to feel a bit dated; as the number of devices that we are using regularly increases (mobile phones, laptops, netbooks, work PC, home PC), the idea of a central device that everything else revolves around seems to me to be an increasingly outdated way of organising your technology; it's too much to rely on. I know 2 iPhone owners who illustrate this point perfectly; one doesn't own a computer, so her iPhone is tied to a friends' PC (and iTunes account), so much of what I would call the important functionality (the ability to transfer files, download software, back up contacts lists, install updates etc.) is lost to her. The other owned a laptop until it recently got stolen, so there's no way for him to upgrade the software on his phone without first completely wiping it (and in the process, losing the music, photos etc. that he now has on his phone, but with no other copies.
More here with background from Some Random Nerd, via Krista Thomas and Reuters.
It's Christmas 2008: time for those New Year's Revolutions 2020
In the year 2020 it is predicted this year that...
The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing "arms race," with the "crackers" who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.
"Next-generation" engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.
Pew in 2020.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Libraries: it's getting tougher still
Dave Prentis said: "The library service is nearing a crisis point after suffering years of funding cuts, deskilling of the workforce and recent threats of outsourcing.
"Although more people visited their local library last year than went to the cinema or a football match, the numbers are declining and so we also need to concentrate on attracting new readers.
From today's Telegraph.
Twitter: finding the trusted circles...
From the Local Democracy blog, via Beth Kanter's blog about how "non-profits can use social media".
We only develop deeper relationships with a subset of our contacts on Twitter, according to Beth - who has picked it up from here.
Here is the original research.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Jules Verne discovers solution to book crisis: bottling
“I don’t have time to write, so I write books with fragrance,” said Ghislaine. “Fragrance is my ink.”
From Fashion Wire Daily.
Me and My Moleskine
“The democratisation of the BlackBerry (and the even earlier adoption of the all-tech iPod by the masses and not just the elite) leaves the posing class with nowhere to go except ‘by hand’. I travelled across Europe with Moleskines because sometimes sitting at a café, even with a shiny silver Mac, isn’t enough; you still look like an accountant. Also, writing by hand makes for such concentration of thought.”
Kate Muir quoting some blogger bloke.
Friday, December 12, 2008
...yer Dead, Pt 2 (ft Books)
The value of books sold on the high street fell 12.7pc in the week to December 6 against the same period a year earlier. That compared to a 6.9pc decline in the UK market as a whole, according to figures from Nielsen, the research company.
From the Telegraph.
On the other hand...
For any reader left feeling they didn't do enough shopping before Christmas, help is at hand from Nintendo, which is preparing to launch a library of 100 classic books for its handheld games console on Boxing Day.
From the Guardian. Or there is:
Bring Out Your Dead pt 1
With Jeff Jarvis as Scrooge...
But print weeklies are looking doomed without my hex. Newsweek is cutting staff and circulation. I got a Time this week and it was so thin I could have used its spine as a razor. U.S. News is essentially no longer. Business Week is struggling. TV Guide is walking dead. Even mighty People was down last year. Weekly is weakly.
From Buzz Machine.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
No, blog will after all eat itself and then repurpose the results
I just found...
...A site dedicated to the spam and scams sent to Madame Arcati (and everyone else) - no matter how ridiculous, fraudulent or outrageous the claims on Arcati's sympathy or greed, all spam received will be showcased here.
Spam2Aracti.
Word shout outs: hey misogyny, precipice & turmoil come on down
The most looked-up words in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2008 ...
...Seven of the ten – bailout, vet, socialism, maverick, rogue, misogyny, and bipartisan – have political associations.
The other three - turmoil, trepidation, and precipice –have appreared frequently this year in discussions of the stock market and the economy.
From Daily Writing Tips.
Shakespeare nudges DARPA and Al Gore out the way to invent digital modernity
Something like that.
Now Ms. Garber singles out a new aspect of Shakespeare’s versatility. As her latest title indicates, she is out to assert that “Shakespeare makes modern culture, and modern culture makes Shakespeare.” In true academic fashion Ms. Garber loves that kind of commutative construction, the chiasmus. Shakespeare loved this too, and Ms. Garber has the chiasmi to prove it, straight from the source. (“What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?,” “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” etc.) She is happy to compound her book’s facile inversions by calling her method, at one point, “as much pedagogical as heuristic (and as much heuristic as pedagogical.)”
Janet Maslin in the NYT on Marjorie Garber's “Shakespeare and Modern Culture”.
Ok Harvey, it's like Bonfire of the Vanities meets, ah, Hackers
Love World of Warcraft? And Hubris? Read this Wired piece now.
...And he played the game. You could call it solace: a way to fill the emptiness of failure with the curiously convincing sense of purpose that comes from steadily amassing a make-believe digital fortune in magic staves and platinum coins. But in time it would be more than that. Much more. Soon enough, amid the daily grind of his obsession, he would see in the game itself a way out of the bleak hole he had fallen into. He would take a clear-eyed, calculating look at what he and his fellow players had been doing all those months—at the countless hours they'd given over to the pursuit of purely virtual but implacably scarce commodities—and he would recognize it not just for the underexploited form of productivity it was but for the highly profitable commercial enterprise it might sustain. He would spend the next half decade bringing that business to life. And though some people would hate what he was building, and others would want to take it all away from him, there would come a day when Pierce, eight years older, could look back on an accomplishment that was bigger than he had ever envisioned—and stranger than he would ever comprehend.
Blog will not eat itself, just go on a diet: the micro blog
Hope.
Tumblr is exactly the kind of startup that’s supposed to be gasping for air in today’s dismal economy: A trendy but niche Web service with a prominent founder and exactly zero revenue.
Instead, the New York-based company has just raised a $4.5 million Series B round that its CEO, 22-year-old David Karp, says will fund it for two and a half years.
From the Wall Street Journal today.
Here's my Tumbir. I use it as a post-modern news in brief, or NIB as I believe they used to say.
All I want for Christmas is a transparent system of politics, and perhaps technology can help
Is it the case that government - and democracy - suffers because it it described by bureaucrats rather than it’s users? Is there a case that ‘Open Government’ would be better served by employing a trusted third-party mediator (with a ‘public service’ remit) and asking them to describe government for the rest of us?
From Local Democracy. Maybe technology can do it?
GuidoFish, anyone?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Iplayer: search loves it
Now how to build that social network around Iplayer
Fastest Rising Searches on UK Google 2008
iplayer
iphone
youtube
yahoo mail
large hadron collider
obama
friv
cam4
jogos
Tons Google more data.
Corporate Blogs aren't trusted...
...stunning news, of course.
...the report points out, "companies that selfishly blog about their products [are reinforcing] the idea that blogs can't be trusted." In other words, 84% of corporate blogs today probably suck.
What's driving this prevailing consumer distrust? It can be many things, from pressure within an organization to make sure that a blog is "branded" enough in what it talks about, to inexperience of a random member of the marketing team charged with launching a blog but without a strategy in mind for how to make it something compelling. Usually, the deficiency comes down to content. Launching a blog with nothing to say is like paying for a blank magazine ad ... sure you own the space, but you've done nothing with it.
The self named Influential Marketing Blog reworks Forrester.
Trust and newspapers: rule 1 don't put the inconsistency on the front page
The science of selling newspapers is clearly Quantum and Stringy right now, but surely we can do a little better than this?
In the crowded Babel of the “information-rich” society, the key is the building and preservation of trust. That point is hardly original. But I’d like to underline the connection between plurality and trust. It’s good to go back to first principles and one of the best questions being asked and answered here was: what value does journalism add? The common denominator in the answers was that reliable information helps voters.
If a society is open and free, there will be no Great Editor in the Sky to settle the question of what or who does that best. A truly plural society will see a competition to establish trust. Someone spoke of the need for a gold standard. In an open society, the gold may mix with dross and people will argue about which is which. Journalism will be an alloy.
George Brock, Times International Editor, and conference chair of the journalism and democracy closed get together at Ditchley Park this week, in part of his summing up of the proceedings.
As Polis Director, Charlie Beckett, explains on his blog:
The thoughts of the various international editors, journalists, academics, experts and officials from government and other organisations were expressed under Chatham House rules.
Read both Beckett & Brock here.
And then see if you can join the dots between "the building and preservation of trust" and "Chatham House rules."
It can't be that hard. But just one question: what is there to be so secret about?
Nobody Knows
People don't really know how this is going to work," says Nicholas Economides, a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business. Companies are trying many different approaches, but he says that a solid business model for social networking has yet to emerge. "There's no formula for success," he says. Even Twitter, for all its notoriety, has virtually no revenues.
From MIT's Technology Review.
The Past of writing - writers on writing
INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?
CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.
The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957
"Honestly, I still can't wait to get my pants on in the morning," Friedman said. He wakes early, then exercises on a stationary bike, and if he has a column in the paper that day he'll read it through online two or three times, asking himself, "Did I get it right?" On weekdays, he'll head into D.C. for a seven-thirty breakfast meeting, which is sometimes followed by an eight-thirty breakfast meeting. The Times has a floor and a half of a building a few blocks north of the White House, and three of the four Op-Ed columnists who are based in Washington--Friedman, David Brooks, and Maureen Dowd, whom Friedman calls his closest friend on the paper--have offices at one end of an open-plan news floor. "I see him every few weeks or months, passing through on his way to Fez," Dowd recently said. Friedman's large corner office has windows that are oddly small and high, leaving wide areas of wall space. He has hung a poster of a three-masted sailing ship tipping off the edge of a flat world, which he bought long before he wrote "The World Is Flat"--attracted, in part, by the title, which is "I Told You So."
The New Yorker, November 10, 2008
More here at Daily Routines.
Journalism & Poignancy - one result of the democratisation of doubt
More sense from Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog.
Chris Satullo, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote a poignant farewell column this weekend. He’s leaving the paper to work for the public station, WHYY.I leave a business that seems to have lost both the will and the way to support the craft of journalism it once burnished to a fine sheen.
It’s a business that, in its pig-headed insularity, authored some of its own woes - but now is being swept helplessly along by the cascading changes of a Gutenberg moment. The Internet is changing our world as definitively as the printing press changed Europe - and more rapidly.
In my time, newspapers - and the journalists who worked for them - have made some mistakes. We embraced a priestly elitism, failing to explain ourselves clearly to readers or to confess frankly our mistakes of judgment. We were slow to respond when people, money and power flowed to the suburbs, slow to grasp the game-changing implications of the Web (though catching up now).
We screwed up plenty. At the same time, though, we did some splendid, useful things for the Republic.
That’s the pesky paradox of it: While we could at times be as arrogant as our critics claimed, we were more ethical and adept than they would ever admit.
Here's the thing about so much of the hand-wringing despair of journalists: how few times do the readers and audiences of "news" get a shout? How often does the behaviour of readers get noticed, or noted? And, if you know any print journalists, how many times have you heard them say: "I don't care about what our readers think?"
The democratisation of doubt extends to doubting the word of journalists - of course: it's out there, one contrarian click away.
More specifically British gloom here:
In 2002, 12.8m national newspapers were sold daily on average in the UK. This year it was fewer than 11m and in 2013 it will be slightly above 9m, according to Enders Analysis, the media research specialist.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
MIT & Storytelling
The Center for Future Storytelling will be co-directed by three Media Lab principal investigators: V. Michael Bove Jr., an expert in object-based media and interactive television; LG Associate Professor Cynthia Breazeal, a leader in the field of personal robots and human-robot interaction; and Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar, a pioneer in the development of new imaging, display and performance-capture technologies.
Kept forgetting to post this.
Newspapers on Facebook important updates 1
The Chicago Tribune is now reading Chapter Eleven
Jeff thinks he knows everything, but Roy knows better
Roger believes that bloggers should always be topless
Paul is happy to be reciting that monologue again
Ian is wondering if he will always be known for Wallcharts
Stephen has started the hat diet
Guido thinks he might be going soft
Sir Michael has been soft for a long time
Charles has commented on Jonathan and Russell again
Charles is now a fan of YouTube
Sam is now writing The Forty Six Steps
Charles has removed television from his list of interests
Roger Commented on Marina's new photo
Catherine joined the group I'm Feeling Hateful Again
Simon cannot believe that Franz Ferdinand has been shot
Roger and John and Simon are now friends with Paul, but Paul thinks they're all monologues
Henry has re-joined MI6
Nick is wondering why the world is so flat and has concluded that it is all the fault of PR
Robert is still a fan of his friend's books
Rod is thanking his lucky stars that despite the credit crunch there still is money to be made from fraying Victorian hemp
Richard is in Florida
Richard has added England to places he'd like to visit
Michael commented on David's new play
David is now online
David is now writing a play about the failure of the internet to bring about democracy
David is looking forward to the first night of his new play, Only Connect
Michael commented on David's new new play
Dylan is worried about the credit crunch
Robert is blogging
Roland is now friends with Robert
Peter is now friends with Robert and Roland and George
The Indy has joined the group Save the Chicago Tribune
Jeremy is still offline
Simon added Lohengrin to his Music I Like
Mark has joined the group I Love I-Player
Piers poked Simon
Simon poked Piers
Lionel is now friends with James and Rupert
Marjorie is frankly confused
The London Newspaper is thinking WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?
The Guardian has moved
Home Thoughts From Rose Tinted Spex
The national flow of news is vital but on this blog I just want to concentrate for a moment on the horror of a local life without a decent paper. A good local paper should be one where you can find the second hand pram, see a pic of your grandparents celebrating their golden wedding, find out why Bank St has been shut by road works for a millenium, read about councillors’ expenses and find out who’s campaigning on what. You should be able to get good information about the council’s programmes, police activity, local schools and local characters.
From Lindsay Mackie in the nef triple crunch blog.
Outside in? The future of local news?
Closing Down ISPs, some thoughts
From Techdirt.
Lynch mob justice, even when well meaning, can inflict collateral damage and occasionally pick the wrong targets leading to significant damage with little recourse.
Some have equated these types of actions with a Neighborhood Watch program - good intentioned folks driving off negative influences. But the key difference is the lack of legal authority and due process.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Green Font: uses 20 per cent less ink and is free to download
A good idea is always simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining the readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes the best results were achieved by using small circles. Lots of late hours (and coffee) later have resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.
Ecofont.
The play's the thing: Hamlet on Facebook
The king thinks Hamlet's annoying.
Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better.
Hamlet's father is now a zombie.
- - - -
The king poked the queen.
The queen poked the king back.
Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.
Marcellus is pretty sure something's rotten around here.
Hamlet became a fan of daggers.
More here from McSweeney's.
And here's a Jane Austen one.
Wanted: Dolby for the Web
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