Category — reviews

Spent the workday Thursday at a Poynter / Kent State media ethics workshop: Whose rules?

Jay Rosen was the keynote speaker (read his keynote here), and he was spot-on.

It was great to hear Rita Andolsen and Denise Polverine speak on a panel.

The opening and closing sessions were maddening, however.

• Professors and the editor of papers like the Plain Dealer spent the morning saying that papers need to experiment — but that these experiments had to “follow the rules” (fail)
• An academic derided the rise of TV live coverage. (What year is it?)
• All scoffed at the use of twitter to cover a funeral.
• And many current journalists — most with newspapers — argued that comments on their sites detracted from “meaningful, directed discussion.”

Twitter and funerals.

If you haven’t seen this yet, the Rocky Mountain News used twitter to live blog a funeral.

Everyone empanelled at the Media Ethics workshop thought this was beyond the pale and completely in bad taste.

It is.

But this was an ethics conference, and the reason this twittering experiment was unacceptable wasn’t really touched on.

How is a live text update from a funeral worse than a live video feed from a funeral?

While wkyc hasn’t twittered at a funeral, our experience at wkyc.com suggests that Twitter users might not be upset with us because we twittered at a funeral; they might be upset because we flooded their twitter stream with updates.

Our live twittering experiments — including twittering at an Obama rally and at the meeting to decide who should attempt to replace Stephanie Tubbs Jones — got negative feedback from three users because we were seemingly abusing twitter. Instead of telling Twitter users where we were at, or merely pointing to live coverage on our site, we deluged anyone who followed us with observations.

Some Twitter followers liked our experiments, however.

If funerals for newsworthy people can currently feature still photographers, live cameras and print reporters, saying that using Twitter to cover a newsworthy funeral is in bad taste seems a bit much.

Which is more intrusive: A satellite truck or a person typing into a cell phone?

Fix the audience, don’t fight the internet.

Participants in the conference most upset by online realities cited the necessity of newspapers (it was all about newspapers at this workshop) to keep democracy alive.

Panelists chuckled as they tried to imagine what bloggers would write about if there weren’t newspapers to harp on.

What I found lacking from any of these “we are defenders of democracy” comments was the truth about our business.

As Terry Heaton has laid out, A media company’s job is to assemble an audience and sell advertising to present to that audience.

If those at the conference who believe journalism exists to keep democracy alive really believed that, they would follow the lead of Snopes, Sharesleuth or Greg Palast and use the power of the internet revolution to expose corruption.

What I really think I heard internet naysayers express today was the desire to go back to the way it was.

One editor said he wants to be focused on getting more ads back into the print product. The print product is dying. Move on.

One newspaper employee could not imagine that conversations online that were not directed by the editors could be “meaningful.” Please read “Here Comes Everybody”

Unfortunately for many local media companies, bloggers would be just fine without your product. Why aren’t more media companies using blogger communities to improve upon their craft?

All involved, myself included, need to eat a big bowl of “get over yourself” and focus at the task at hand: Creating an audience — in any medium — so that advertising can support what you do.

This particular conference did not focus enough on the What to do or the How to do it, rather it stayed firmly in the Why(ine).

Everything is Miscellaneous and The Cluetrain Mainfesto, both in whole (Miscellaneous) and in part (Cluetrain) by David Weinberger, tell the story of what the internet is: A digital conversation.

Cluetrain is a quick and compelling read, and, it can be read online here.

Everything is Miscellaneous dives into what the digital nature of our online information means.
We’re in a third order of information – information that was once physically located in a book or as a specimen is now hindered if we treat it like its physical ancestors.

• For example, the role of editors in a digital world should not be to limit the amount of available writing on a topic – but rather to collect all available writing on a topic.
• And Wikipedia rules because it has adopted a working definition of neutrality that works in the messy intersection of people online: An article in Wikipedia is neutral “when people have stopped changing it.” It also engenders authority by recognizing when an article isn’t neutral, truthful or hasn’t been verified. (All things that my own workplace, wkyc.com could use a touch of). It also kicks more digital ass than wkyc.com by linking to topics directly within the text of an article*
• “Conversation improves expertise by exposing weakness”
• Pandora.com, Last.fm, Zillow, PropSmart, FareCast.com, Digg.com and kayak.com are examples of meta-businesses that provide users more ways to sort information.

Some web sites of note from Miscellaneous:

• Thinglinks.org
• Valdis Krebs (A greater-Clevelander)
• Librarything.com
• PLoS One

*But, Wikipedia does save links to outside sites for the bottom of an article.

As reported around (for example), Nine Inch Nails has a new album coming out that they are promoting via a constellation of web sites and phone numbers. Each, apparently, spirals you deeper and deeper into the story line behind “Year Zero.”

Sadly, NIN, I have zero patience for clicking through un-usable websites to learn more about something that I don’t really care about.

The sites … 1, 2, 3 (there’s more in the first link above or here) all remind me of another band with a mixed-up sense of what a web site should be: radiohead.

I really don’t care much about NIN … so I’m not going to spend time figuring out a web site that’s purposely hard to use. I can’t muster the willpower to learn how to use radiohead’s site … and I love listening to them.

Here’s the odd thing for me, though.

A DJ told me to dial 216.333.1810 to hear another part of NIN’s marketing campaign. I did. And I cracked up as I listened to a recorded scene where a hysterical woman screams and shouts as she’s murdered.

Don’t tell me why I called, or laughed, but in this case, picking up the phone and listening for a minute was much easier than trying to figure out what to click on.

Now don’t be sad / cause two out of three aint bad
Meat Loaf, Two out of three ain’t bad

From outta the library to this blog:

Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist should be required reading for humans. I would have majored in econ if I read this 10 years ago.

In contrast, An Army of Davids: How markets and technology empower ordinary people to beat big media, big government and other Goliaths bored me. It seemed like the book was a punched-up series of blog posts. While the overall message of “the internet will break down barriers” is a sound one, I still want my books to contain arguments backed up with research. Facts should have footnotes.

One of the books that Davids leaned heavily on is Ray Kurzwel’s The Singularity is Near, a fantastical look at the acceleration of technology and how it is quickly advancing/outpacing/replacing biology. Kurzweil’s premise is that humans don’t understand the accelerating, exponential changes that were born out of computer technology.

Some of the fun he dreams of? Machines with the power of the human brain will be available in the 2020s for the cost of a computer today.

From there, ideas come at a blistering pace as readers are introduced to “reversible computing” that could make a rock smarter than all humanity. And that’s just on page 134 of 487 densely-packed pages.

Ultimately, Kurzweil thinks we’re headed towards 2001: A Space Odyssey land here — namely that we’ll become machines, and then we’ll figure out how to bring information to matter, stretching into everything in our universe.

And who wouldn’t want to believe some of what he thinks will happen shortly? Come on — for the right price, we could live forever. And that’s my only complaint about the whole book. It’s too neat for this messy thing known as civilization.

I somehow doubt that I’ll be able to squirrel away enough money to be able to afford the nanobots necessary to fix the inevitable decay of my body. And I doubt my health insurance would cover that. But, Kurzweil says that upgrading my body will be something like purchasing mobile phone service: It will take awhile for the technology to mature, then it will be everywhere, just as mobile phone service took baby steps in the 80s and 90s and then exploded today so that now it’s assumed that you have a cell phone. I’ll take the T-Mobile life extension, thank you. Not-the-best-coverage, but I like the price.

More at kurzweilai.net

On December 10, I read a blog post titled Shattering The Eyeglasses Scam.

Being a big dork, I couldn’t get the story of how “Glassy eyes” got new glasses for $81 online.

The last pair I purchased cost about $500 before insurance from LensCrafters. After insurance, we were out about $250. (I can’t find the receipt — this was in 2004).

So, in early January, I headed over to LensCrafters for an exam. My carrot-eating regimen must have worked, because my prescription hadn’t changed. After being sure to get my “PD,” I spent about 30 minutes waiting for a ride home from my bro-in-law while looking through the LensCrafter offerings.

There was one pair that I really, really liked: The Donna Karan 3525.

Without the power of the internets, I would have gotten them on the spot. But, those frames (Just the frames) cost $200. After insurance, that would have put me back $70. And then the fun of being really blind and needing extra-thin lenses (think: money, money, money for LensCrafters) arrives and I end up spending a lot more than $70.

Back home, I started shopping for frames in earnest. After about an hour, I narrowed it down to two choices from Zenni Optical:

1. $29.95 pair
2. $8.95 pair

Ordered the frames Sunday, January 7th for $130 total (Again, I needed lens upgrades) and got the spectacles Saturday, January 20th.

The first pair is still in need of adjusting, but I’ve been wearing the second pair non-stop since having them slightly adjusted at Costco. (You can see the pair I’m wearing above. John Hodgman, look out. The other pair is on flickr)

Grand total so far? $10 co-pay for exam + $131.72 for glasses = $141.72.

If you want to save money on your next glasses purchase, here’s a brief review of online retailers: Eyeglass Retailer Reviews.

Once again, the internet + tv = goodness

1. Watch jawdropping performance on Letterman: Rodrigo y Gabriela.
2. Finish laundry
3. Goto emusic.com and download duo’s album (samples) and move to iPod
4. Goto sleep knowing Tuesday morning commute will rock out with new tunes.

Here’s what I know about Rodrigo y Gabriela: Heavy metal flamenco.

It’s the money, stupid

I spend a lot of time thinking about money.

Sadly, I use to little of this time to dream up new ways to create money — my thoughts are mostly about paying off old debts and trying to not incur new ones. This focus will change over the next 12 months.

Here’s my rundown of how my wife and I track and build wealth at the moment.

Budgeting
Simple monthly budget: Family monthly budget

Percentages: How much you should spend on what: It Pays to Do the Math In the Budget Game

Saving
ING Direct

Or, check BankRate.com to find a savings account that works for you

Debt reduction
Debt snowball

I’ve also created a simple excel file to track our outstanding debt. Just a simple spreadsheet that lists all of our debts that I revisit weekly to remind me why buying a Wii, a new car or some other dumb want makes no sense.

Investing
Road to successful investing

Buying
CapitalOneAutoFinance
We used CaptialOneAutoFinance for the only new car purchase we’ve made to date. Easy + a great rate.

Costco

Ongoing research
That being said, here are some financial resources that I check up on regularly:

Scott Burns. If you haven’t read The Coming Generational Storm you should. If books aren’t your bag, at least read his latest column Road to successful investing.

He’s the most common-sense financial writer employed by a media outlet today.

Get Rich Slowly. Great tips, great site.

I will teach you to be rich

Beat the Press. Dean Baker’s insightful look at the often-crummy economics journalism.

Using these guides, we’ve turned our financial outlook around this year.

I couldn’t have told you how much I could afford for a car payment before September 30. I had no idea how much we were spending on gas, let alone tell you if we were spending too much as a percentage of our income.

Also, this is the first year we’re going to make a good return on my 401(k) plan. All thanks to the people listed above.

Web development 101 power point

Video on YouTube

Viral video marketing

Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan team up in a terrific duo of business books: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done and Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right are like an MBA overview of current CEO best practices.

Then again, I’m not a CEO nor have I earned an MBA.

Execution is the better read for actually getting things done when you’re not in charge.

Jeff Goodell mines the rich history of coal in the United States to unearth the good it has brought and the destruction it has wrought in Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future

Much like the authors of The End of Oil and Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Goodell paints an alarming picture of our near-future, pointing out that thanks to our reliance on coal fired electric plants, planet Earth will irrevocably enter a warming period in 2017.

In short, our addiction to coal is as perverse and damaging as any addition to oil.

This addiction began in earnest with the brilliant Samuel Insull, Jr., a protégé of Edison. Insull “set in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of rising [coal / electric] use and declining rates that eventually enveloped an urban society in a ubiquitous world of energy.” Heady stuff for one man.

Just as Earl Butz put America on the path to obesity in 1971, Insull hatched our crack-like need for electricity in the 1890s, creating big electric plants as far away from cities as possible, allowing government regulation to create an electric monopoly in a region and stimulating demand for consumer products that required electricity.

The greatest innovation of Insull — flat rate pricing for electricity. Sadly, our dependency on coal is largely invisible. Sure, I have asthma, but it’s hard to pinpoint what triggered it. Yes, coal miners are among the most exploited workers in America, but frankly, I don’t care about what happens to unlucky schmucks in West Virginia when I turn on my TV or recharge my cell phone. And most importantly, the cost to use my central air conditioning cost the same no matter the time of day. Although it costs more to create electricity when demand is high, us end users are “totally disconnected from the price of power.” Instead of a market for electricity, a market that might make our use of coal more rational and better for the world, we are stuck with a system hatched in the 1800s.